By Karen Everhart Bedford Over the hills and far away, Teletubbies come to play. We know this because the sun baby, who rises over the set at the beginning of each episode, gurgles, coos and shrieks with pleasure at the adventures of the Teletubbies, four alien yet adorable, toddlerlike beings who live there, cared for and entertained by otherworldly gadgets. Teletubbies , the groundbreaking BBC children's series that's prompted both an outcry and a massive consumer craze since its debut last March debut in Britain, is about to arrive in the PBS schedule, April 6. Anne Wood, series co-creator and head of Ragdoll Productions, developed the Teletubbies concept while testing children's responses to her other series Tots TV and Rosie and Jim . Andrew Davenport, series co-creator, is a trained speech therapist.
Wood is a former English teacher who made career leaps to publishing and later to television.
She and Davenport observed very young children and designed the show to meet their physical, social and cognitive needs. Although Teletubbies' official target audience is children aged one to four, infants under one do watch the show, acknowledges Kenn Viselman, president of itsy bitsy Entertainment, which holds U.S. licensing rights. Teletubbies is filled with the concepts of early childhood development. Viselman makes no pretense that Teletubbies delivers explicit lessons that American audiences recognize in Sesame Street and other PBS programs. But when you're dealing with a child this young, anything is a learning experience for them.