| Play School | |
|---|---|
| Format | Childrens |
| Country of origin | New Zealand |
| Production | |
| Camera setup | Multi-Camera |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | TVNZ |
| Picture format | PAL |
| Original run | 1970s – 1993 |
Play School was a New Zealand educational television show for children. It was based on the British Play School show.
It was first broadcast in New Zealand during the 1970s originally screened twice a day at around 10am and then 2:30pm. Playschool was filmed from the TVNZ studio that was in Dunedin. The last series screened on television in 1990 .
The show starred five toys, which are famously nostalgic for New Zealanders who watched the program as children. They are:
Today, Big Ted, Manu, Jemima and Humpty are part of a collection at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand. The museum also has a large collection of clothing and props from the show.[1] The whereabouts of the original Little Ted is unknown. One of the rehearsal Little Ted toys was blown up by the film crew after the completion of the final series and can be seen at the Otago Settlers Museum in Dunedin. [2] The original clock from the series was discovered at a library in Invercargill in August 2009. [3]
In 2006, TV2 started to screen the Australian version of Play School. It features New Zealand presenter Jay Laga'aia who has been on the show since 2000, though the Australian version is significantly different to the New Zealand version, which was similar to the British format of the seventies and eighties.