In the Night Garden...

In the Night Garden... is a British preschool children's television series created, written and composed by Teletubbies co-creator Andrew Davenport for CBeebies and BBC Two and produced by Ragdoll Worldwide, a joint venture of Ragdoll Productions and BBC Worldwide. The show was aimed at children aged from one to six years old. The programme is narrated by Derek Jacobi. It is filmed in live action and features a mix of actors in costume, stop motion, puppetry and CGI animation. The characters include Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy, Makka Pakka, the Tombliboos, the Pontipines, the Wottingers, the HaaHoos, the Ninky Nonk, the Pinky Ponk, the Ball and the Tittifers.
Andrew Davenport stated in an interview with the Guardian that the key inspiration for the series was his own dream world as a child. This started coming into place in 2004 when Davenport created sketches for the characters of Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy and Makka Pakka. The series would go on to be publicly announced a year later, and filming would eventually start in March 2005.
Chroma key sets would be constructed for use on the show. Backdrops would be used as well and would come in the form of a modified video of an actual forest. The show was filmed at Smatchley Wood, a private forest located in Warwickshire, England. Hundreds of props would be built too: the majority were spherical flowers resembling pom-poms as well as several types of oversized oval-shaped stones. Vector art for the show (e.g. the pictures of the characters and props on the gazebo and in the bedtime story) was all designed in Adobe Illustrator.
The constant usage of gigantic inflatable structures, hundreds of props, expensive chroma key, heavy costumes and radio controlled vehicles meant for an estimated amount of £145,000 per episode.
The show features a large cast of colourful characters with unusual names who live in a magical forest scattered with large daisies and brightly coloured flowers. The characters mostly speak short and repetitive phrases and each one has its special song and dance. The garden is a sunny and colourful environment and the music is jaunty and music box-like. According to Wood:
Each episode starts with a shot of a night sky with the stars appearing, followed by a shot of a child in bed while the narrator introduces the programme's episode. The scene then cuts to Igglepiggle in his boat, getting ready to travel to the Night Garden whilst the theme music plays. The camera pans up to the night sky, followed by brightly coloured flowers. Then, we see Igglepiggle going to the gazebo to meet his friends. After that, the title appears on a bush, and either the Ninky Nonk or the Pinky Ponk appears.
The episodes end with the Tittifers singing their song, and then one character gets ready to go to sleep. At the same time, they hear a bedtime story, which is generated by the magical gazebo that sits at the centre of the Night Garden. This story is a summary of the plot of the episode which was animated using Adobe Animate (then known as Adobe Flash when the show was in production). Sometimes, the characters all dance together under the Gazebo. Then, we see all the characters except for Igglepiggle going to sleep while Igglepiggle delivers his goodbye sequence. Then, the theme music plays as the Night Garden turns and retreats into the night sky, and Igglepiggle is seen asleep on his boat as the end credits roll over.
In the Night Garden... is intended to help children relax and achieve calming relationships with their parents. Producer Anne Wood also states: "We became very aware of the anxiety surrounding the care of young children which manifested itself in all kinds of directions, but the one big subject that came up, again and again, was bedtime. It's the classical time for tension between children who want to stay up and parents who want them to go to bed. So this is a programme about calming things down whereas most children's TV is about getting everything up."
In 2007 and 2008, the show won the Children's BAFTA for "Pre-School Live-Action," as well as being nominated in 2009.
In some episodes, when a problem needs solving, the gazebo spins and chooses a picture until it finds one associated to a solution that will solve the problem.
One parent petitioner was quoted by The Daily Telegraph commenting: "My four-year-old refused to believe it was bedtime because In the Night Garden... hadn't been on and it was daylight outside.", this is because the show was removed from CBeebies' Bedtime Hour for a while in 2008.
In the United Kingdom, In the Night Garden... debuted on 19 March 2007 and aired its final episode on 6 March 2009. From 23 April until 10 June 2007, the show took a break from airing on the CBeebies channel although repeats were still shown on BBC Two. From 11 June 2007 until 28 March 2008, the show aired on the CBeebies channel every day, including weekends, at 6:25pm in the "Bedtime Hour" slot, in addition to earlier 11am showings on BBC Two on weekday mornings.
From 29 March until 29 August 2008, In The Night Garden... was removed from its 6:25pm "Bedtime Hour" slot, which resulted in a nationwide fan petition outside the BBC's Television Centre studios asking for the programme to be re-instated to its normal slot. The show returned to the daily "Bedtime Hour" slot at 6.20 pm as of 30 August 2008 and began showing the second series (beginning with "Slow Down Everybody") on 1 September 2008. The show was also shown on BBC HD from 3 November 2008 to 22 December 2009.
From 3 January until 4 September 2009, the show was moved to a 6:00pm transmission time but was retained in the “Bedtime Hour” slot. From 5 September 2009 onwards; to this day, the show remains in the 6:20pm slot and is traditionally the last full-length programme of the day before the bedtime story segment. From 9 January until 29 August 2010, the show was shown on weekends at the earlier time 1:20pm because of this, the 2:30pm “Discover and Do” slot was reduced to 11:00am from 11 January to 3 September 2010. From 6 September 2010 onwards, the show was removed from its 11:00am “Discover and Do” slot, once again reduced to the 6:20pm “Bedtime Hour” slot, it was also the last programme shown in the mornings on BBC Two from 2007-2012.
Several Region 2 DVDs have been released in the United Kingdom by BBC Worldwide (initially through BBC Children's DVD and then through 2 Entertain) from September 2007 to May 2012 and Abbey Home Media from 2014 to 2017:
The boxset Hello Everybody! (24 November 2008) includes "Hello Igglepiggle", "Hello Upsy Daisy", "Hello Makka Pakka" & "Hello Tombliboos"
In the Night Garden... has books, DVDs, toys and magazines that have been marketed since 2007.
In 2007, Ladybird Books published a full In the Night Garden range of books, some had lifted the flap features (The Prettiest Flower, 2007) and some had sounds from the programme (What a Noisy Pinky Ponk!, 2009), these usually retailed for £8.99 when they were released from BBC Books/Ragdoll Productions.
The show's producers, Ragdoll Productions, signed a deal to make the toy producer Hasbro a global partner before the show was first aired and merchandise was first made available in July 2007. The range includes small Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy and Makka Pakka stuffed toys and a small Ninky Nonk train with detachable carriages. Wheeled toy licensee MV Sports & Leisure Limited produced a range of scooters and trikes. Play-Doh made some dough that came packaged with an Igglepiggle-shaped cut-out.
In the spring of 2008, several new toys arrived, including roll-along characters, Talking Cuddly Makka Pakka, Ninky Nonk Pop-up tent and more. Hasbro won the 2008 "Best Licensed Toy or Game range" Licensing Award for their In The Night Garden... range.
In January 2009, a spokesman for the BBC confirmed that they had asked Hasbro to change the CGI skin colour of the Upsy Daisy CGI doll following "a handful of complaints". The doll was originally released with a noticeably lighter complexion than seen in the television series, as it was based on the animated version of Upsy Daisy.
In 2010, more new toys were released like the Igglepiggle and Upsy Daisy set that contained a copy of the Series 2 episode The Pontipines' Picnic (2008) on DVD as well as an electronic Ninky Nonk (which made the actual sounds from the Show) and a Playmat that had: the Bridge, the Tombliboo Bush (with The Tombliboos and their beds), the Gazebo and the Pinky Ponk.
A different company, Golden Bear Toys have also made a range of In The Night Garden... toys, featuring Upsy Daisy and Igglepiggle. These include the "Musical Ninky Nonk Bubble Train" and the "Igglepiggle Wind-up Musical Boat."
On 1 October 2019, the "In the Night Garden Igglepiggle Peek-a-boo Clip-on Toy" made by Golden Bear Toys was recalled due to a possible choking hazard to young children.
In the Night Garden...Live! started a first UK tour in July 2010. The show took place in an inflatable, purpose-built ‘show-dome’. The show debuted and premiered in Liverpool and moved on to London, Glasgow and Birmingham. In the Night Garden...Live! has toured the United Kingdom every summer.
In 2018, the ‘show-dome’ format was retired due to low ticket numbers. For 2019, the show began touring as a theatre-based experience.
A spin-off special series, titled In the Night Garden... ZinkyZonk Specials was announced by WildBrain in September 2022. The six 15-minute specials are CGI-animated in Canada by WildBrain Studios, with an initial broadcast deal made with Hop! Channel and Luil tv in Israel. The series first premiered in Australia on ABC Kids in September 2022.
The specials centre on a brand new character called the Zonk, who sends the characters off to the magical world of the ZonkeyZoney so they can relax in peace. The series is fully animated in 3D CGI animation, unlike the original series which was a mix of CGI, 2D animation and live-action.