Peep and the Big Wide World
Peep and the Big Wide World is an animated preschool television series created by Danish-Canadian animator Kaj Pindal. It revolves around the lives of three birds named Peep, Chirp, and Quack, as they discover, investigate, and explore the world around them.
The show was based on the 1988 short film of the same name produced by the National Film Board of Canada, which itself is based on the 1962 short film The Peep Show, also produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The series premiered on April 12, 2004, on Discovery Kids and on TLC as part of their Ready Set Learn! children's block in the United States, and on TVOKids in Canada. It was produced by WGBH Boston, 9 Story Media Group, Eggbox LLC, the National Film Board of Canada, and Discovery Kids Studios, in association with TVOntario and Discovery Kids, and is distributed by Alliance Atlantis.
Throughout its run, it was underwritten by the National Science Foundation, with Northrop Grumman underwriting season four in 2010.
Each episode consists of two 9-minute stories, which are animated segments, and two 2-minute live-action segments, in which children explore and demonstrate the same topic presented in the animated segment. The show is narrated by Joan Cusack and the background music is produced by Steve D' Angelo and Terry Tompkins.
Overview
Viewers follow Peep, Chirp, and Quack as they investigate and explore the world around them. Following the 9-minute animated episode, there is a 2-minute live-action segment which features children exploring and demonstrating the same topic presented in the episode. The animation consists of bright colors, 2D, 3D and simple shapes, which simulates and reflects a youthful art style.Characters
Attributed to the following sources:Main
- Peep is a male, yellow chicken who is very curious. He is the youngest bird of the group. The show's title is derived from his name. However, Peep is female in the original short film.
- Chirp is a female, red robin who is also very curious, and attempts frequently to fly, with unsatisfying results, until "A Daring Duck", when she flies to the ground. In "Big Bird", she meets an adult robin for the first time. She is Peep and Quack's best friend. However, Chirp is male in the original short film.
- Quack is a male, indigo blue duckling who wears a white sailor's hat. He is older than Peep and Chirp, as they are still chicks. He frequently boasts about himself and ducks as a whole, and unwittingly makes many discoveries. Quack is purple in the original short film and is now referred to as blue, but is still quite indigo. He also seems to have a hoarding issue, as evidenced in the episode "An Inconvenient Tooth, Part 1".
- The Narrator is an omniscient voice who narrates each episode. She usually remains separate from the action, but occasionally, the characters are shown to be able to hear her and will interact with her.
Minor
- Ant is a very busy male ant who is leader of the ants.
- Bat is a very shy bat.
- Beaver Boy is a young naïve male beaver who lives in an adjoining pond to Quack's pond. He appears in several episodes. His desire to please his mom and dad often results in him chewing down too many trees. He often calls Quack "Blue Sailor", Peep "Yellow Guy", and Chirp "Red Round".
- Beaver Dad is Beaver Boy's businesslike father.
- Beaver Mom is Beaver Boy's workaholic mother.
- Blue Jays are very silly blue and white birds who love to cause lots of trouble when they see stuff.
- Bunnies are inhabitants who live in rabbit holes. In season 1, three bunnies who lived in a rabbit hole became Peep's friends in "Peep in Rabbitland". In season 4, five bunnies are aided by Peep and Quack to find their bunnysitter in "You Can Count on Bunnies".
- Bunnysitter is a bunny who babysits the 5 bunnies.
- Dragonfly is a quiet dragonfly.
- Fish are cohabitations of Quack's pond.
- Fish Jr. is the youngest fish in the pond and Quack's best fish friend.
- Frog is a frog who lives in Quack's pond. He rarely talks.
- Groundhog is a young groundhog destined to find her shadow.
- Old Groundhog is the oldest of all groundhogs.
- Hoot is a menacing, but kind purple female owl who lives in the Deep Dark Woods.
- "Me" Tiny Ant is the tiniest ant in the anthill. "Me" was named after a misinterpretation from Peep.
- Nellie is a red female dog who acts as a seemingly maternal figure for the birds.
- Newton is an old, male, dark-green turtle who lives under an apple tree.
- Quack #2 is a female duck who has her own pond, built by Quack, Peep, Chirp, Beaver Boy and his parents, and Quack's pink doppelgänger. Like Quack, Quack #2 is boastful and narcissistic, but unlike Quack, Quack #2 is annoying, cruel, and bad-intentioned.
- Rabbit is an excitable and somewhat distracted rabbit.
- Raccoon is a gobbo, male brown & black raccoon who has lots of rubbish.
- Robins are two individual robins with differentiating personalities. One is a blue robin who flies around giving Chirp pep talks and comes from "Chirp Builds a Nest". Another is an adult robin who appears in "Big Bird" and "Chirp Flies the Coop".
- Skunk is a rather deadpan skunk who lives near Quack's pond.
- Snail is a pondweller in Quack's pond.
- Spider is a smart and sneaky spider.
- Splendid Bird from Paradise is a green bird who was captured from the jungle, adopted by a little girl and found her way in the Big Wide World.
- Squeak is an anxious pink, female mouse who lives under a brick and always worries a lot about what could go wrong.
- Squirrel is a brown squirrel with a long tail who favors acorns.
- Tom is a sly, male blue kitten with black stripes who often tries to eat Peep, Chirp, and Quack. He is the sole antagonist.
Music composition
Music for Peep and the Big Wide World is composed by Terry Tompkins and Steve D'Angelo, from Eggplant. The opening theme is performed by blues musician Taj Mahal.Broadcast
United States
Peep and the Big Wide World was originally broadcast on TLC and Discovery Kids — the latter as part of the Ready Set Learn! preschool block — from April 12, 2004, to September 14, 2007. Carriage on the Discovery children's networks ended on October 8, 2010, when Discovery Kids discontinued the block and reruns of the first three seasons to make way for the new network to launch known as The Hub on October 10. WGBH began airing the series on August 1, 2004, and it was later offered to public television stations via independent public television distributor American Public Television from April 1, 2007, to January 3, 2018.The last two seasons were broadcast exclusively on select local public television stations with episodes distributed by APT from January 4, 2010 to October 14, 2011, though second-runs of previous episodes began as early as April 1, 2007. APT continued distributing reruns until January 3, 2018, well after commercial networks dropped the program. A total of 60 episodes were broadcast.
Beginning on January 1, 2018, distribution and reruns of Peep and the Big Wide World began airing on the 24-hour PBS Kids channel, marking the first time the series aired nationally on PBS Kids. Despite being a production of PBS station WGBH, Peep and the Big Wide World was turned down by PBS in 2003 in favor of developing programming directed at "slightly older children". The U.S. broadcasts of the series ended on December 26, 2021, when it was replaced with reruns of Dinosaur Train to the 7:30 a.m. weekend morning timeslot.
APT and PBS Kids broadcasts of Peep and the Big Wide World were paired with a short episode from Pocoyo, which aired immediately after each show from 2010 to 2021.