Fimbles

Fimbles is a British television program designed for pre-school children. The series lasted 200 episodes, airing from 2002-2004. The Fimbles are Fimbo, Florrie and Baby Pom, who all live in a bright, lush, and colourful place called Fimble Valley. Fimbles is produced by Novel Entertainment, which also created the characters. The Fimbles are magical.

The snouted and concentrically-ringed appearance of the Fimbles was based on the eponymous villains of Lucy Anna and the Finders, written and illustrated by Sarah Hayes. Although Hayes is cited in the credits of Fimbles, and she was involved in adapting the characters for the television series, the implacably omnivorous Finders (who, throughout the book, threaten to eat Lucy Anna) have nothing else in common with the Fimbles.

The scripts of the 200 episodes were written by a number of writers, most notably the programme's producer Lucinda Whiteley. The Fimbles are cuddly, hippo like creatures and are portrayed by 'skin' actors in complex, fluffy animatronic suits and all look quite similar apart from their colour and size. Fimbo is yellow with green stripes, is the tallest and he likes to eat crumble crackers, Florrie is blue with purple stripes, a little smaller than Fimbo and is often seen carrying a Fimble-like doll called Little One, and Baby Pom is the smallest, green with pink stripes and generally follows the others like a toddler, whilst pushing Trundle Truck. Other characters, which are essentially large scale puppets, are a strange-looking blue tree frog called Rockit (sic), a purple and green striped mole (who almost looks like one of the Fimbles) called Roly Mo, a plump and motherly pink bird called Bessie and her chick, Ribble. Originally Ribble was an almost featureless squeaking blob of orange fur with a beak; more recently he has also had eyes.

The three Fimbles have a special "sixth sense" - when the Tinkling Tree tinkles its bell-like blossoms, it makes the nose, fingers and topknot of one or more Fimbles twitch as they get the 'Fimbling Feeling'. This tells the character(s) that they are going to find something. It may be a natural phenomenon - a patch of sunlight for example, an everyday object, e.g. a tambourine, or something which would be totally inexplicable in the real world, such as a puddle of blue "goo". Whatever is found becomes the catalyst for the episode's adventures and the trigger for the Fimbles' creative play.

Roly Mo, who has a vast underground library of books, tells a story in every episode, and either Roly Mo or Bessie give a summary at the end of the programme as to what has happened to the Fimbles that day. Live action film of real children at play also features in every episode.

There is a spin-off to Fimbles called The Roly Mo Show, starring Roly Mo and a cast of other characters including Roly's niece Little Bo. The Roly Mo Show concentrates on literacy and books and is made as an educational programme. Also devised by Novel Entertainment the programme plays daily on the CBeebies channel. The Fimbles also feature in a touring stage show for children, called Fimbles Live! which was devised by the playwright and author David Wood CBE.

International broadcasts

In Australia from 3 February 2003 to 30 September 2008, Fimbles was broadcast on ABC and its third digital channel ABC2.

As of 1 June 2007 Fimbles (粉宝乐园) is being broadcast in China on Shanghai Media Group's children's network HAHA TV. All 200 episodes are being shown sequentially and dubbed in Mandarin Chinese. As the show in its original format is only 19 minutes long, the show has been lengthened by 5 minutes for the Chinese market.

In Vietnam, since 2008, Fimbles is a part of the show 5 Minutes to Learn English Everyday (5 phút học tiếng Anh mỗi ngày), which is produced by HTV4 together with many famous English centers and international schools. However, in VBC, it is a separate show named Những chú heo con Fimbles!

From June 2008, the show has also been broadcast by Tata Sky DTH in India under partnership from BBC on channel CBeebies.

Award nominations

• BAFTA Children's Awards 2003
  • Nominated for Best Pre-school Live Action Series^[1]
• BAFTA Children's Awards 2004
  • Nominated for Best Pre-school Live Action Series^[2]

Trivia

• Roly Mo has appeared on The Weakest Link, a former British game show. He was voted off in the 5th round (he said he spent too much time reading books and needed to be watching good quality television programmes), but said he would still be seen as a winner by the Fimbles even though he lost because it was the taking part that mattered. This episode was a puppet special. Anne Robinson also asked Roly Mo how irritating the Fimbles were, and at the request of both Anne Robinson and the audience, Roly Mo and the other puppets sang the song "Inside a Book".

References

External links

• Fimbles at the Internet Movie Database