Series two of the popular pre-school animation began to air on CBeebies during April.
Following the success of the first series of Olobob Top on channels around the world – including CBeebies (UK), ABC (Australia), S4C (Wales), YLE (Finland), Disney (Japan), and EBS (South Korea) – Beakus and Olobob Top have produced a further 26 x 5-minute episodes of the show. The pre-school animation follows the surreal stories of the adventurous Tib, Lalloo and Bobble in the Olobob Forest.
Director/producer Steve Smith comments: “With the completion of series two we are fulfilling our dream to tell new and imaginative stories about the Olobobs and their friends. We’ve expanded their world and created some wonderfully unique characters, all in the promotion of creative play, which we believe is fundamental to a child’s behavioural development.”
The first series rated in the top 10 shows on CBeebies no less than five times in its first six weeks of broadcast, and has been a mainstay on the channel ever since. It also performed above its average slot viewership on both YLE and ABC. With an instantly recognisable visual style, the property was recognised by the UK’s biggest animation festival, MAF, with an Industry Excellence Award in 2018, and was also nominated for a Kidscreen Award for best pre-school show the same year.
Nick Hall, from CBeebies added: “CBeebies is delighted to welcome our audience back to the quirky and unique world of Olobob Top. With creative play at its heart, the many adventures of Tib, Lalloo and Bobble, alongside their forest full of friends, are sure to fuel the imagination of our viewers. An acting masterclass by narrator Stephen Mangan ties everything together and will keep parents and caregivers returning to the always-inventive Olobob Forest.”
To support the new series, art director & writer Leigh Hodgkinson will be continuing Olobob Top workshops around the country. Plans to develop a further 36 x 11-minute episodes this year are in the pipeline, in addition to new content on the property’s vibrant social media platforms. Olobob Top is published in a series of activity and board books by Bloomsbury with product rights managed by Those Licensing People, TV rights by Cake Entertainment, and music published by Sony ATV.
