2018
Bluey premieres
An Australian cartoon about a Blue Heeler puppy and her family debuted on ABC Kids, then won over children and parents far beyond Brisbane.
On October 1, 2018, Australian children met a six-year-old Blue Heeler puppy named Bluey. The animated series premiered on ABC Kids, and new episodes of its first series aired daily through the rest of October. Each story follows Bluey, her younger sister Bingo, and their parents, Bandit and Chilli, as the family turns ordinary days into games of make-believe.
The show was the idea of Joe Brumm, an animator who had worked on children’s programs in the United Kingdom. He drew on his experience of raising two daughters and wanted to show how much children learn through free, imaginative play. Brumm made a one-minute pilot with a small team in their spare time, then took the idea to Ludo Studio in Brisbane. A longer sample caught the attention of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC, which ordered 52 seven-minute episodes. Many of the crew were first-time animators from Brisbane, and the city’s parks and shopping centers supplied the show’s backgrounds.
The dog breeds came partly from Brumm’s own childhood, when his family had a Blue Heeler named Bluey, a Dalmatian named Chloe, and a kelpie named Rusty. Bandit is voiced by David McCormack of the band Custard, while the child characters are voiced by children of the production crew.
Why it matters
Bluey quickly became the most watched children’s program on Australian broadcast television, and by March 2019 it was the most downloaded program in the history of the ABC’s iview service. Disney acquired the international rights in 2019, and the producers refused requests to replace the Australian accents. In 2023, Nielsen rankings showed that it had overtaken Cocomelon as the most popular children’s program in the United States.
Critics have praised the show for its warm, modern picture of family life and for Bandit, a father who throws himself into his daughters’ games. It has won Logie and AACTA awards, an International Emmy Kids Award, and a Peabody Award in 2024, and it has grown into a stage show and a planned feature film.
Did you know?
In 2026, five episodes were translated into Yolngu Matha, the first time the series was dubbed into an Indigenous Australian language.
