Bluey! (Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureJune 13, 2023

The legacy of Footrot Flats lives on in Bluey

Staff writer

Bluey! (Design: Tina Tiller)

Tara Ward talks to Bluey director Richard Jeffery about how a little cartoon about a Blue Heeler became one of the most beloved shows on television.

Since Bluey began in 2018, humans around the world have fallen in love with the wacky antics of a six-year-old Blue Heeler pup, her parents and little sister. Last year, Bluey was TVNZ+’s most streamed show (a whopping 29 million streams), as well as the number one programme across all on-demand platforms in Australia and the eighth most streamed show in the US. It’s won an International Emmy, several Logies and a BAFTA, and is currently broadcast in over 60 countries around the globe.

That’s a lot of kids (and more than a few adults) watching a lot of dogs playing a lot of games. Director Richard Jeffery has a theory as to why Bluey has found such astonishing global success: “Anyone can watch it with a family anywhere in the world, and say ‘Oh my god, that’s my life’,” he says over the dog and bone. It’s not every day you get to talk to someone who’s not just one of the masterminds of the show, but also a character on it. Jeffery voices a footy-loving, barbie-cooking border collie from New Zealand who is friends with Bluey and her family.

“Yes, I voiced Mackenzie’s Dad, quite badly,” Jeffery jokes, “but it was a lot of fun.”

Bluey, Chilli, Bingo and Bandit (Image: Supplied)

So how did a New Zealander (and his border collie alter ego) end up on such a quintessentially Australian show? Jeffery began his animation career in New Zealand 25 years ago working for Warner Bros and Disney, before moving to the UK, where he worked on popular children’s TV shows like Charlie and Lola and Tinga Tinga Tales. It was there that he met fellow animator Joe Brumm. Years later, when Jeffery had returned to New Zealand and Brumm to Australia, Brumm called to pitch a new animated children’s TV show called “Bluey” about a curious young pup and her loveable family.

“It was an easy yes,” says Jeffery. He joined Blue as an animator in season one and later became director for seasons two and three. He’s not the only New Zealand connection to the show: the characters of pup Mackenzie and his border collie family, who speak with distinct New Zealand accents, are a small homage to Footrot Flats, says Jeffery. “Growing up, Joe [Brumm] loved Footrot Flats, it was one of his big influences. He really, really enjoyed the comic book series. And, you know, having a Kiwi director and animator, he wanted to get a bit of Kiwi influence in there.”

Bluey, Bandit, Bingo and Mackenzie (Image: Supplied)

Trans-Tasman relations aside, Bluey also captures the small but beautiful (as well as the frustrating and annoying) moments of family life, telling sweet stories with a gentle charm and warm humour. Parents watching Bluey for the nine millionth time will understand the struggles of Bluey’s frazzled parents Bandit and Chilli, while children will adore watching Bluey and her pals turn everyday experiences – like visiting the supermarket or a picnic at the park – into creative adventures. “Bluey is essentially based around how kids learn through play, and so kids can see those moments and recognise them.”

This broad appeal was always the show’s intention, Jeffery says, and he credits the writing for creating mature storylines and heartfelt moments that connect with viewers far beyond the show’s traditional four-to-six-year-old audience. Several episodes touch on big life issues like separation, infertility, loss and change, explained in ways that children can understand but with enough emotional depth and relatability to bring tears to an adult’s eyes. Jeffery reckons the Australian setting helps too, with the series recognisably set (and entirely produced) in Brisbane. “It brings a little flavour to it, which translates well.”

What also translates well is the refreshing way Bluey reflects modern day parenting. Bandit and Chilli seem to have an endless amount of patience for playing yet another game of Magic Xylophone, and while that might make the really lazy parents among us feel bad, there’s no room for a hapless Daddy Pig-type of parent on Bluey. “We wanted to make Bandit break the mould of the classic dad being a bit of a dunce,” Jeffery says. The parents on Bluey don’t have all the answers, just like the rest of us pooches, but they’re devoted to finding them out.“We want the audience to know that they’re not the only ones going through it, you know?”

Chilli and Bandit enjoy a quiet moment in season three (Image: Supplied)

As director of Bluey, Jeffery works across the entire production, from editing to art direction to music, and while he’s not giving much away about the new season, he does reveal it’s full of classic Bluey humour and many more touching moments. It also includes a special guest appearance from music icon Neil Finn. Jeffery says it was a delight to meet Finn (who voices Bandit’s doctor in ‘Exercise’), and that Sam Neill, Lucy Lawless and Jeremy Wells are next on his famous New Zealander cameo wish list.

Even in the show’s hectic early days, Jeffery says he could sense there was something special about Bluey. ”It was definitely our intention to make the best show that we could, and we really set the bar high,” he says. He’s proud of making a show that has become a household name around the world, one so beloved that a generation of children and their whānau will grow up watching it together. “To be honest with you, we went beyond our expectations,” Jeffery says, “but it’s been amazing.”

Bluey is available to stream on TVNZ+.

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a scene from Blackadder featuring Blackadder and Baldrick appears on a film reel, to the right is a turnip in an envelope

Image: Getty Images; design by Tina Tiller

Pop CultureJune 13, 2023

A cutting plan: Blackadder, enraged fans and the curious case of the turnip in the mail

Maureen Sinton

Guest writer

Image: Getty Images; design by Tina Tiller

When Blackadder arrived on New Zealand screens, the 80s British comedy quickly achieved cult status. But when a rumour spread that several minutes of every episode were being edited out by TVNZ, things got weird.

I was once sent a turnip in the mail. It was 1990. The parcel arrived on my desk at TVNZ in Auckland where I was the TV One programmer. It was sent as a form of protest against the editing of the comedy Blackadder (burning playgrounds hadn’t been thought of back then). I didn’t know it was a turnip until the newspaper wrapping had been peeled back. I remember the fetid smell, just as you’d expect a sweaty tuber wrapped in newspaper, having travelled 1,430km from Dunedin to Auckland, to smell. I don’t know for sure that it came from Dunedin, but at the time enraged Otago University students were making a lot of noise about the editing of their favourite TV programme.

In British television comedy history, Blackadder attracts almost the kind of reverence given to Monty Python. It features almost as many quotable quotes. “I have a cunning plan.” “It’s so [insert adjective], you could rip the head off it and call it a [insert noun].” Rowan Atkinson plays Edmund Blackadder, the conniving antagonist, and his dim witted dogsbody Baldrick is played by Tony Robinson. Baldrick is obsessed with turnips. I presume that was the connection.

When the series started screening on TVNZ in the 1980s, it quickly achieved cult status, especially among university students. In 1990, when a repeat of the first series was showing, a rumour got out that several minutes of every episode were being edited out by TVNZ. It was true. As the programmer at the time, along with my colleague Glenn Usmar, I copped a lot of flak for that. Thirty-three years later, it’s time to explain.

Blackadder on a TV listing page from the Listener, April 2, 1990

To understand what happened, you need to realise that Blackadder was made by the BBC, a non-commercial broadcaster with a non-commercial schedule to fill. TVNZ was (and still is) a commercial environment. Programmes on TVNZ at that time had to be around 23 minutes in length for a half hour, or 46 minutes for an hour, to allow space for advertising. Compare this with the standard BBC programmes which were around 29 minutes or 58 minutes in duration. Add advertising plus programme promotions to 29 minutes of Blackadder, and it took up 40 minutes in TVNZ’s programme schedule.

Blackadder was considered a little raunchy back then so it was in the schedule to start at 9.30pm on a Monday night. Accordingly, the late news that followed was scheduled to start 40 minutes later at 10 past 10pm. And this really upset the then head of news. He wanted his late news to start on the dot of 10pm. I said it couldn’t be done without editing five minutes out of Blackadder. The response was an unhelpful: so what? Who will notice or care? My boss, the head of programming for channels One and 2, was an Australian who didn’t know who Rowan Atkinson was, and wasn’t terribly interested in the debate.

At our weekly board of management meeting, I argued the case vociferously for not editing. Sadly the board backed the news department and so the editing began. As did the rumours and the outrage. Glenn and I were as horrified as our viewers. As were the presentation staff whose job it was to prepare programmes for going to air. Most of them were huge fans of the programme. It was around this time that the turnip arrived.

Blackadder was not the only programme to be edited. Many other BBC programmes were edited to fit. Other British schedule stalwarts like Coronation Street were also edited but in Coro’s case, it was comparatively little. This was because Coro had been made for the commercial ITV network in the UK, to fit a commercial format.

I don’t know if the BBC knew what we were doing to their comedy taonga. It wouldn’t have taken much to figure it out, but they never said. At that time, I understand that TVNZ purchased more BBC product than any other offshore market. We had a bulk deal giving us first dibs on all their product such as comedies like Keeping Up Appearances and many of the Montana Sunday Theatre dramas. We were an important customer to them.

Apart from hiccups like the Blackadder debacle, being a programmer was a great job back in the day. Watching loads of potential content, deciding what to buy and when to schedule it. One day someone told me about this new technology that meant in the future, television viewers would be able to watch what they liked, when they liked. You would be able to watch unedited episodes of Blackadder at 9.30 at night or 9.30 in the morning. Television programmers would be out of a job. A cunning plan indeed.

Update, 1.30pm, June 13: A reference to Blackadder first screening on New Zealand television in 1990 was removed as the show was in fact shown here several years earlier.

Dr Maureen Sinton (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki) is a former radio and television producer, TV One programmer and now lecturer at Te Ara Poutama, the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development at AUT. She was TV One programmer from 1989 to 1993, and later the programmer for Prime Television at the time of its start-up.