Top 10 Children's Programs -- #8: The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends

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(I've been behind in these, and I apologize for that. Thanks for your patience!) This one is a slight cheat; my children have never seen this as it was broadcast on TV, but on a set of DVDs. Still, it's one that has been pulled out by them and played again and again over the last 17 years or so. It's beloved enough by them that I'm including it in this list. This program originally aired on BBC in the early 1990s and aired on the Family Channel (later called ABC Family and later Freeform channel) in the United States between 1993-1995. There's another British Peter Rabbit program that's currently showing on Nickelodeon, but that's a different show entirely. Each episode opens with a live-action sequence with an actress playing the author Beatrix Potter painting with watercolors while outdoors, surrounded by animals that show up as characters in her stories (later episodes showed her returning from errands with glimpses of animals along the way). When it begins to rain, she runs home where she makes tea and introduces the story in the form of "picture letters" that she writes for young friends, and the story is portrayed in animation. At the end of the story, it switches back to live action and Ms. Potter mails the picture letter (or asks a local boy to post the letter for her). The technique used for the animation is called "rendered artwork", and brings Potter's original watercolor illustrations to life. Over 300 animators, tracers, and artists worked on these painstaking animations to capture the charm of the original books as much as possible.