A reboot of the British children’s television series ‘Teletubbies’, which was created by Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport, has been set by Netflix.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show will feature the four Teletubbies interacting and discovering their world and will be narrated by Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Tituss Burgess.
Set to debut in November, this reboot is a part of a slate of Netflix shows aimed at young kids debuting in the coming months.
The Teletubbies reboot is one of a handful of new versions of kids’ shows from the 1990s and early 2000s that delighted kids and were sometimes the scourge of their parents.
In June, Peacock announced a CGI redo of Caillou, which in turn follows new versions of DuckTales, Blue’s Clues, Carmen Sandiego and Animaniacs, among others.
‘Teletubbies’ originated on the BBC in 1997 and first aired in the United States on PBS, a year later. In 1999, right-wing televangelist Jerry Falwell accused the show of pushing LGBTQ propaganda on children because Tinky Winky carries a bag and because “he is purple — the gay-pride colour, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle — the gay-pride symbol.”
As per The Hollywood Reporter, the ensuing controversy had a Streisand Effect, only serving to raise the show’s profile; the head of the show’s production company, Ken Viselman, responded that Tinky Winky is “not gay. He’s not straight. He’s just a character in a children’s series. I think that we should just let the Teletubbies go and play in Teletubbyland and not try to define them.” (ANI)
