Sander Jones Jasmine Bartholomew Poppie Boyes Duke Davis Alfie Sanderson Leo Templer Dexter Varrall Bella Green Ollie Chequer Forrest Davis Arabella Duffy Wren Stembridge Amos Greenall Florence Dhunna Bram Hicks-Little-Jones Jude Creagan Frasier Scott
The programme's characters are talking anthropomorphic animals, with Duggee communicating in woofs. The episodes are based around The Squirrel Club, an activity club for children that Duggee leads. The children–the club's Squirrels–take part in all kinds of activities, have adventures and earn badges for their accomplishments. Each episode shows the Squirrels completing an activity or adventure relating to a badge that they earn at the end of each episode. There is no set formula for every episode, with many referencing or parodying pop culture.
Hey Duggee has five series. It was first shown on 17 December 2014, and officially premiered on 12 January 2015. The BBC and Studio AKA produced a second series in early 2016,[2] with the first episode airing in the United Kingdom on 26 September 2016. A third series was commissioned in October 2017,[3] with the first episode due to be broadcast in Autumn 2018, but was pushed back to 4 March 2019. It aired until September 2021 with a Christmas episode shown in December 2020. The third series received increased acclaim and popularity amongst children and adults alike during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns.[4] It was renewed for a fourth series on 5 September 2022.[5]
On October 13, 2023, it was announced a spinoff series Hey Duggee's Squirrel Club is currently in the works[6] as well as a fifth season of the original series.
In 2022, to celebrate the premiere of David Attenborough's The Green Planet documentary on BBC, Hey Duggee created a short film called "The Green Planet Badge" with a guest voice by Attenborough. The short premiered on January 9, 2022 on YouTube.
The first half of the fifth series began on 28 June 2024 with the episode “The Carrot Badge”.
Production
The programme is animated using the computer program Flash, with a minimalist style using filled shapes with no outlines, and only effects that Flash is capable of,[7] and only the Duggee character regularly uses gradients. For example, if there is a frog character, then it usually bears the appearance of a plain green triangle.
The production team consists of around 16 in-house animators, with six to eight scriptwriters.[7]
Characters
Main
Narrator – the narrator of the show.
Duggee – a friendly big brown male dog and the leader of the Squirrel club. He communicates by saying "woof" and "a-woof". He wears yellow clothing with badges.
Betty – a talkative and intelligent purple octopus. She always wears a (usually) pink and yellow band on her head.
Norrie – a sweet-natured and curious brown mouse. In "The Breakfast Badge", she says she likes shakshouka for breakfast, and in the "Singing Badge", she also said that a "Japanese plum" is her favourite food. She usually wears a pink long-sleeved dress, a yellow tie and purple shoes.
Roly – an enthusiastic, loud and hyperactive grey hippopotamus. He usually wears orange pants and brown shoes.
Tag – a gentle, clumsy blue rhinoceros. He usually wears maroon pants and light orange shoes.
Happy – a tall, easy-going green crocodile, with a love of water and splashing in puddles. According to the Series 4 episode "Happy's First Day", he didn't like water when he was little. He usually wears teal pants, orange shoes and teal glasses. It is implied that Happy is adopted, as his parents are shown to be Elephants.
Recurring
Sander Jones as:
Enid – Duggee's pet cat.
The Rabbits – live in the field near the clubhouse and all sound like hippies, apart from one who speaks French.
Diesel – an angry bull who often chases Duggee and the Squirrels.
Frog
Phillip Warner as:
Naughty Monkey – a monkey who loves to cause chaos.
King Tiger – local royalty whose favourite entertainment is the "jelly-belly dancers".
The Chickens – live in the hen-house and enjoy watching episodes of a Spanish hospital-drama.
In 2015, Hey Duggee was adapted into several videogame apps for mobile devices.[citation needed] These include:
The Big Badge App
The Big Outdoors App
We Love Animals
Colouring
Jigsaw Puzzles
The Counting Badge
The Exploring App
The Squirrels Club
The Christmas Badge
As of May 2015, Jasnor holds the master toy licence in Australia and New Zealand.[8]
"The Stick Song"
"The Stick Song" premiered in the series 2 episode, Hey Duggee: The Stick Badge, which was first broadcast in the UK on 7 December 2017. Duggee and the Squirrels are making a campfire when Roly discovers one of his sticks can talk. The stick turns out to be a stick insect and it sings a techno song.
As of 2020, the song has been viewed over 7 million times on YouTube.[9] The track has been featured on BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Two's Newsnight.[10] Many remixes have been produced, by both the BBC and others, including a heavy metal remix by children's heavy metal band Slay Duggee.[11]
Stuart Heritage, writing in The Guardian, described the series as being "peerless".[12]
On Twitter, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) in Greenwich complained about "The Dressing-Up Badge". In the episode, Roly dresses up as a firefighter, but is described as being a fireman, which Greenwich LFB described as being outdated whereas the term firefighter is "the preferred respectful, inclusive, non-sexist, non-gendered term that should be being widely used by all media but especially the BBC".[13]
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