Pablo (TV series)

Pablo is a British-Irish children's television series that premiered on CBeebies on 2 October 2017 and created by Grainne McGuinness. The series follows the adventures of Pablo, a five year old (later 8 year old) autistic boy, and his imaginary anthropomorphized animal friends, the Book Animals, who go on adventures in Pablo's 'Art World'. It is a hybrid of live action sequences and 2D animation. The series features a voice cast and writing team who are all autistic.
It also broadcasts internationally, including on ABC Kids, Nat Geo Kids, CBC Kids, Universal Kids, S4C and Netflix.
On 11 October 2021 it was announced a third series was in development. This season will be reworked, with Pablo now eight years old and with a redesigned art style, and be for an older audience. On 1 April 2022, BBC Children's announced it had commissioned the third series, although in October 2024 it was refocused into a spin-off called Pablo: Boy Meets School, with Crayola joining to produce along with Cake and Paper Owl, it is set to release in 2026.
A typical episode will begin in the real world, where Pablo will be engaging in some sort of activity. When encountering a problem or something he doesn't understand (like the loss of his own smell following a bath or the unusual way sandwiches are cut to be rectangular rather than triangular), the episode will transition into an animated 'art world', represented by Pablo's drawings. There, Pablo and the Book Animals will work together to solve whatever problem is at hand.
The spin-off follow up series will send a now eight year old Pablo to primary school, a fascinating and at times overwhelming place. With the Book Animals at his side, Pablo will face new challenges and adventures.
Starting with "The New Sofa" on 7 October 2019, all the week's Pablo episodes would be made available on BBC iPlayer before their individual broadcast on CBeebies. From "Finger Prince" onwards, however, episodes would only go on iPlayer after their individual broadcast.
In addition to the main programme, a series of online shorts were produced in 2019. These include Going to School, Pack for School, Making Friends and Everything Pumpkin. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, an episode-length special was produced.
Pablo won Best Preschool Programme at the 2019 Broadcast Awards. It was nominated at the 2018 British Academy Children's Awards in Digital, was a Children’s Finalist at the 2018 Royal Television Society Awards and won the TORC Award for Excellence at the 2018 Celtic Media Festival. It was nominated at the 2021 Irish Animation Awards for Best Animated Preschool Series and Best Writer for Preschool Animation (for Andrew Brenner, which it won).
In April 2020, Ladybird began publishing a series of picture books, adapted from previous Pablo episodes. Sumita Majumdar and Andrew Brenner, who wrote on the series, oversaw these.
There will also be "Ladybird Readers" Level 1 books, designed to aid children develop their speech, reading and writing skills.
In 2019, it was announced Selladoor Worldwide is developing a stage musical adaptation of Pablo, in collaboration with Paper Owl Films. The original creative team will be involved.