In the Night Garden Treehouse TV Show

Review of Preschool Kids TV Programme about Bedtime

Apr 28, 2009

The Treehouse tv show In the Night Garden uses stories about funny characters to reduce children's anxiety about going to sleep and help them establish bedtime routines.

Made by the same team that created Teletubbies (Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport), In the Night Garden... uses repetition, rhymes, and humor to soothe young children's anxieties about going to bed. Parents who do not mind their children viewing tv right before sleeping can use episodes from the show as part of a shared nightly bedtime routine, while parents who do prefer to limit their children's pre-bedtime television-viewing can watch it with their kids at earlier times in the day.

Each episode follows the same structure and uses the same rhymes and musical cues to appeal to kids' love of repetition. The repetition also helps parents use this children's tv programme to establish a calming bedtime routine.

The plot of each episode mimics the experience of a child starting to drift off to sleep and imagining adventures with his or her playroom toys before falling asleep for good. Igglepiggle, the furry blue main character, can be seen as a stand-in for the child viewer. Both Igglepiggle and the kids watching the show are just visiting this special garden along their way to their own beds and sleep.

Each episode begins (after a shot of a child falling to sleep with a parent in close touch) with a shot of Igglepiggle preparing to sleep in his boat on the dark ocean. He lowers the boat's sail (which is also his blanket) and turns on a lantern like a night light. Suddenly the scene changes, and he is walking to the garden for some fun with the other characters.

Igglepiggle travels to and from the garden on a special path that only he ever uses, and he is the only character that is not shown going to bed in the garden. At the end of each episode, he returns to his boat to fall asleep for good.

All the characters are shown to be very attached to their own beds, and the final moments of each episode are spent with the narrator bidding each character good-night as he or she falls asleep in his or her bed. This reinforces the message that the children watching the show should also be excited and happy about sleeping in their own beds.

Toddlers and preschoolers will relate to the look and personalities of the characters from this sweet kids' tv programme. The inhabitants of the garden are designed to resemble nursery toys, from the rag doll-like Upsy Daisy and her inflatable skirt to the round tumbling Tombliboos and the Pontipine family of tiny wooden figures. The two vehicles in which the characters travel – the Ninky Nonk train and the Pinky Ponk dirigible – also resemble toys.

Furthermore, the characters share the same interests as kids of this age. Igglepiggle carries a blanket around. The Tombliboos love making music on their drums and building with blocks. Makka Pakka is obsessed with cleaning things and with keeping track of the various possessions he trundles around on his Og-pog (scooter).

Although its primary purpose is to entertain kids and calm their fears about sleeping alone by presenting bedtime in a positive way, this children's preschool tv show also develops kids' logic skills and understanding of how stories are told. Small mysteries must be solved in each episode (Why is Makka Pakka's trumpet making that awful noise? Where is Igglepiggle's blanket?) and as the narrative slowly progresses, the show provides young viewers with the clues and time they need to figure out the answers before the characters do.

At the end of each episode, as all the characters are shown going to bed, one character is told a bedtime story by the narrator that retells the day's events (Sir Derek Jacobi narrates the entire show using a perfect mix of grave authority and playful sing-songiness). Seeing the same story told with different words and in a different form (still illustrations) helps kids begin to understand how and why people tell stories and, in turn, how they themselves can play with telling their own stories about things they imagine or things that happen to them in their own lives.

Production Values, Character and Set Design

Visually, this children's tv programme is stunning. The fusion of puppetry, stop-motion animation, computer animation, and brightly filmed live action creates a distinctive look that sets this show apart from other current kids' tv programmes created solely with computer animation. The style is at once old-fashioned and modern, a mix reflected on the soundtrack as well, which incorporates musical themes ranging from the synthesized burbling beeps used for the Pinky Ponk to the lush carousel music that sets the scene in more character-driven situations.

Parents who do want to use In the Night Garden... to establish bedtime routines can read a review of the 2009 DVD Welcome to the Garden to decide if they would like to purchase a copy and be able to view episodes on their own time schedules. They may also like to read about a line of In the Night Garden... storybooks that can be used during shared bedtime storytime.

The copyright of the article In the Night Garden Treehouse TV Show in Preschool TV is owned by Renee Carver. Permission to republish In the Night Garden Treehouse TV Show in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.