I discovered The Backyardigans early on in its first season in 2004, before it had a full 20 episodes, back when CBS was still running Viacom content from Nick, Jr. in its Saturday morning lineup. No one else I knew watched the show, whether or not they had kids. When I discovered it, I immediately knew it was different. Something new. It felt like a show destined for cult status, like the newly arrived Grey's Anatomy, or Lost, only without all the hype or critical acclaim, and buried in the Saturday morning lineup in between the bizarre Icelandic import Lazy Town and the uber-popular Dora the Explorer.
While it would be bounced from network TV to cable when CBS and Viacom split in 2006, its popularity nevertheless grew, leading to fan blogs, Wikipedia entries, and merchandising mania (an entire aisle at my local Target store has product).
For connoisseurs of animation, the show's 3-D CGI animation (created by Nelvana) might be offputting. While the show uses realistic background, the characters neotenic features are rounded and simplified, as if animated in the mid-1990s (when less processing power was available to animators and it was more expensive. The look of the Backyardigans characters seems slightly more advanced above the limbless VeggieTales cast but not as articulated as the cast of Reboot). But this show isn’t about the animation (Although Animator Jeff Astolfo did win a Daytime Emmy in 2007 for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation.)
There are four reasons The Backyardigans stands out:
1. Dance. The show has hands-down, the best choreography in children’s television. The reason? Beth Bogush, the show’s choreographer. As a dancer with thirty years of performing experience and a former teacher for The Ailey School of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, she knows dance. The show hires real dancers. The dancers are videotaped, and the animators at Nelvana use the video as a reference. The Backyardigans, short and round though they be, dance like people--people who know how to dance.
2. Music. So if I were going to create a musical program for kids, going after the same market that The Wiggles and Barney the Purple Dinosaur had conquered, what would I look for? I dunno, maybe the guys from Avenue Q to bring back that Joe Rasposo sound?
How about a pianist/composer for a Thelonius Monk-based “fake jazz” band that also counted prog rock, Kurt Weill, and Erik Satie among its influences? Probably wouldn’t be my first choice. Or an intuitive choice at all. Nevertheless, Nick, Jr. hired Evan Lurie, a founding member of the Lounge Lizards, to score the show, and he has the musical chops to take on most any genre. And for The Backyardigans, he does.
Musical director Lurie and Douglas Wieselman create four songs for each episode (usually one is a traditional melody, the other three original), plus a theme and background music. Four songs in a twenty two minute show? That makes this show a musical (as opposed to other shows tailored for young children, where one song is tacked on as an introduction and a finale).
In the early planning stages of the show, Lurie created a list of musical genres. Someone made the decision to use a different genre each episode. So far, in three seasons, they’ve tackled hip-hop, Gilbert and Sullivan, swing, ska, country-western, polka, norteño, jazz from different eras, mambo, bollywood, opera, rock from just about every decade, bossa nova, klezmer, funk, Motown, tango….
But here’s a stroke of genius: the genre of music chosen is not the obvious one. As the kids search for the perfect wave in “Surf's Up,” the gang sings to lively Afro-beat arrangements. In “Riding the Range,” an episode featuring the gang on the way to a hoedown in Texas, the music is hip hop. It's counterintuitive, but it works. “The Key to the Nile” is set in Ancient Egypt, but the music is pure Broadway. The next season adds Alicia Keyes as a guest voice in “Mission to Mars,” where space exploration gets a Kenyan Highlife beat. In all of these cases, Lurie uses a full complement of musicians and sounds. You won't hear a keyboard trying to fill in for a horn or a string section.
Whether the music is Western Swing or Django Reinhardt, Lurie and Weiselman manage to make it work (along with the lyrics of series head writer McPaul Smith).
This isn’t kids music. It’s enjoyable music, plain and simple. (Parents who have purchased the soundtrack CDs of the show for their kids are known to slip several songs into their own iPod playlists).
Oh, and this also means that Bogush has to choreograph in a new dance style each episode. Disco. Line dancing. Hip hop. The Charleston. Flamenco. It's all there.
3. Voice. In the US and Canadian versions of the show, the characters, who are child-age in the show, are voiced by children. So instead of a thirty-year-old voiceover artist trying on a kid voice, a ten year old boy is doing the voice of a six year old boy/moose. It’s surprising how much a difference this makes, aurally, in capturing the feel of kids at play.
4. Content. The show is the brainchild of Janice Burgess, who started as an executive at Nick, Jr., overseeing the production of award-winning shows like Blue’s Clues and Little Bill. When she was given the greenlight to become a creator, she put together a show about kids playing--not about kids learning to count, or learning to follow a sequence of instructions in two languages, or exploring emotional intelligence. She created a show where kids play, and use their imaginations to go on adventures. In the realm of television shows aimed at two to five year olds, each with their own team of educational psychologists to develop learning outcomes, this is a refreshing change.
The scripts often features clever dialogue, although, to be sure, because of the target audience (two to ten year old children), certain plotlines (haunted houses, ninjas, mad scientists, secret agents, English drawing room mystery) are defanged and played for laughs.
The show won a Gemini Award in 2007 for Best Pre-School Program, and a Gracie Award in 2008 in the category of Outstanding Children/Adolescent Program.
Sources:
Janice Burgess. “Meet the Creator of the Backyardigans.” NickJr.com. <http://www.nickjr.com/shows/backyardigans/back_meet_creators.jhtml> (May 28, 2008)
Eileen Clarke. “Bring It On.” Entertainment Weekly. October 4, 2006. <http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1542683,00.html> (May 28, 2008)
Mark Fleischmann, et. Al. “Lounge Lizards.” TrouserPress. <http://trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=lounge_lizards> (May 28, 2008)
Internet Movie Database. "The Backyardigans." <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439349/> (May 28, 2008)
Cynthia Littleton. ‘"The Backyardigans'" musical tour guide is a Lounge Lizard.” Variety. September 19, 2007. <http://weblogs.variety.com/on_the_air/2007/09/the-backyardiga.html> (May 28, 2008)