The telly’s new tubbies: Boohbahs

A certain word is about to enter the everyday lexicon of parents whose preschoolers watch public TV. Say it once with a New Age-y, echoey inflection, and then many times, loudly, in rapid succession: “Boohbah.”

“Boohbah,” which began airing this week on PBS stations, is the latest British television import for young children, and the latest from the creators of the massively popular “Teletubbies.” The show’s rotund-body puppet stars are called Boohbahs and “boohbah” is what viewers are encouraged to say out loud during the show -- many, many times -- to give them the feeling that they are controlling what happens in each eccentric, movement-oriented episode.

“Yes, the ‘boohbah’ word drives the parents mad, I’m afraid,” said the show’s creator, Anne Wood, speaking from the New York branch of her British production company, Ragdoll Ltd. “But it’s the magic word and children love it.”

Some adult observers on both sides of the Atlantic are using such words as “bizarre,” “trippy” and “psychedelic” to describe the show, whose visual elements were inspired by scientific photographs of microscopic life and cellular structures.

The colorful, atom-like Boohbahs -- Humbah, Zumbah, Zing Zing Zingbah, Jumbah and Jingbah -- have round pneumatic bodies that spin and form patterns through synchronized movements. Their retractable heads have sweet faces dominated by big baby eyes, and their world is one of surreal, kaleidoscopic images of rainbow swirls and ribbons. At intervals, the Boohbahs inhabit a sparkling ball of light that zooms around the world to “dance” with giggly children in segments taped in 15 countries, and there are organic-looking “pods” where the Boohbahs recharge.

As they deflate, the Boohbahs sound like whoopee cushions, emitting flatulent blats and bleats. And anyone who doesn’t think that kills hasn’t been around a 4- or 5-year-old lately.

Wood isn’t particularly concerned about those who don’t get it. She’s used to mystifying adults with her child-centric, wild flights of fancy. The once-controversial “Teletubbies,” which she created with Andrew Davenport, has not only become a staple of early childhood and made her the immensely wealthy head of a global children’s entertainment empire, it has also overcome much more severe criticism -- for its toddler target audience, baby-talking, TV-tummied characters and Tinky Winky’s red purse -- than has greeted “Boohbah” thus far.

Partly, perhaps, because “Boohbah” is directed at children from 3 to 6, not younger toddlers, and it’s a program for “movers,” as Wood describes them, not passive watchers.

“It’s a ‘televisual’ game,” she said, “where children get up and do and respond.”

With an emphasis on spatial awareness, motor skill development and puzzle solving, the playful Boohbahs invite audience participation as they bobble and move repetitively about and spin into various patterns of aerobic movement and color. Live action segments with a cast of adult actors called Storypeople feature comic visual puzzles executed with vaudevillian flair, and limited narration that leaves pauses designed for responses from viewers.

The Storypeople are “pieces in a game,” Wood said. “They move more or less as directed. So, if their skipping rope is too short, then [viewers] say ‘boohbah’ and the magic word makes the rope longer. We call it “What If” thinking. We want children to anticipate what an outcome might be.

“All of our programs are conversations. We leave gaps for the child to respond. If you don’t plaster the thing with too much talk, then children are encouraged to supply the words themselves.”

In the “look what I can do” segment that ends each show, one or more children demonstrate a movement -- whether it’s situps or balancing on one foot -- offering an unspoken invitation to viewers to join in. Periodically, segments will feature a child in a wheelchair or with other special needs.

Repetition throughout is key, Wood said.

“To an adult eye, it’s like, ‘Will this never end?’ but it is very much directed to children’s sensibilities and children’s perceptions of the world, and some adults will find that perhaps irritating. But then some adults don’t like the Baby Sun [an infant’s face] in ‘Teletubbies’ either, so you can’t please them all.”

“Anne is absolutely focused on the child and the child’s developmental stage,” said John Wilson, senior vice president of programming for PBS. “She doesn’t leave a lot of clues for the adults in the room. Her choice is always to go with the mind of a child and what the child needs, and I think that is what can lead to the ‘I don’t get it’ factor. But all you have to do is watch it with your own child a few times and you see that they do get it.”

PBS has purchased 40 episodes of the show, with the option of adding more during the second or third year of its four-year-contract with Ragdoll if the show strikes “Teletubbies”-type gold with viewers. The network, which is complementing the show with an interactive website, will also receive a portion of the show’s merchandising profits. “It allows us to put the money back into children’s programming,” Wilson said.

If it comes close to the marketing juggernaut that has driven the “Teletubbies,” it would be a good thing, indeed, although Wood is pushing licensees for products that get “much closer to the spirit of the Boohbahs than we did to the spirit of the Teletubbies [at first],” with consideration for the show’s science- and health-related influences, “rather than just depicting [what is] on screen -- label slapping, as it were.”

“We had a lot of learning to do,” she noted ruefully. “Some of the new Teletubbies products are wonderful, but it took off at such a rate, there was black market stuff and it was horrible. I hate all that. But this time we have our own team here in New York and they’re keeping a close eye on everything.”

Wood hopes that parents will see “Boohbah” as a chance for some bonding time with their children.

“There are lots of opportunities for the parent to respond to what the child is doing and say, ‘My, look what you can do. You can stand on your left leg for so long, aren’t you great?’ ”

Falling over is OK too.

“You don’t want children to feel inhibited in any way because they can’t do [the movements] perfectly,” Wood said. “It’s the doing of it that matters. The Boohbahs are so ridiculous and silly that if you are any way shy of movement you still get up and do like they do, because they’re not perfect by any means. They’re just these funny little round creatures that love to give it a go.”

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‘Boohbah’

Where: KCET

When: 6-6:30 a.m. weekdays

Rating: The program has been rated TV-Y (suitable for children of all ages).