luey is the best show on television, but nothing about its premise would suggest that this is the case. It’s a simple animation, designed for preschoolers, about the adventures of a family of Australian dogs made up of Bluey, a six-year-old blue heeler, her four-year-old sister, Bingo, and her parents. Imagine The Simpsons if everybody liked each other, or Peppa Pig if the father was a functional member of society, and that’s Bluey. And yet on every level – charm, perceptiveness, cross-generational appeal, ambition, execution – it is unbeatable. In six years of parenting, Bluey remains the only programme to have caused all four members of my household to laugh to the point of breathlessness at the exact same time. We are not alone in our enthusiasm. When it launched in Australia in 2018, Bluey quickly became the most downloaded show in the history of ABC’s on-demand service, and has now racked up around half a billion views. When it debuted on CBeebies in April in the UK, it immediately became the most-watched show of the day. Last year it won an Emmy. It is so successful that Hollywood A-Listers are lining up for roles. People cannot stop watching Bluey. “Obviously I wanted it to be rewatchable,” says Bluey’s creator Joe Brumm from his home in Queensland, with a mixture of pride and contrition. “But kids have really put it to the rewatching test.” Although Brumm credits everything from Community to South Park as inspirations for Bluey, his two biggest influences are British. Brumm lived in London for 10 years, animating preschool shows such as Charlie and Lola and Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom, which gave him an idea to take home. “I really love Peppa Pig,” he says. “I loved how English it was, and I felt like I’d love to do a universal kids’ show that had an Australian feel.” And Bluey is a distinctly Australian show, from the setting to the language to the hiring of the son of Steve Irwin, the naturalist and TV presenter who died in 2006, as a guest star. The other British show was slightly more adult. “I loved Gavin & Stacey,” he says. “My wife loved that show. My parents loved that show. It was genuine co-viewing, where two generations weren’t laughing at each other’s exclusion, but seeing how each generation sees each other. I always thought: ‘I’d like to try that, but let’s get four-year-olds and 40-year-olds watching together.’ That felt fairly audacious.” And yet, in Bluey, it is so deftly done. My three-year-old’s favourite episode is Featherwand, where Bluey’s younger sister plays a game that makes anything she points at too heavy to carry. The kids get a kick out of the children calling the shots; the adults can relate to how hard it is to get anything done around the house when a four-year-old is determined to play. “I’m not a big fan of that thing where you tell jokes for the parents that the kids just won’t get,” says Brumm. “I try to avoid that, and find the spot where you’re laughing at each other.” Bluey’s secret weapon is Bandit, arguably the best screen dad of all time. Unlike, say, Peppa Pig’s Daddy Pig – a blundering, clueless, stereotype-enforcing fool – Bandit is playful and engaged and patient, no matter how tired and crotchety he gets. I ask the question all Bluey-watching parents have asked themselves at some point: is Bandit based on you? “Well, on an extremely, extremely good day, I would say I get close to Bandit,” Brumm defers. “But no.” I ask Brumm whether the series is rooted in any formal worldview about parenting. “There’s no disclaimer saying these are endorsed tactics,” he says. “But I do read a lot about play. I really nerd out about play, and what that does for kids, and how that helps them socialise. If I’m proud of anything with Bluey, it’s the fact that I think it might teach adults a bit about how effective play is in a kid’s life.” As well as portraying parents in their best light, it can also leave them heartbroken, with some episodes hitting grownups hard. My favourite episode, for example, is Camping. Bluey and her family visit a campsite, and Bluey befriends a French puppy. They bond, despite the language barrier, and plant a seed in the dirt together. One day, she wakes up to see that his family have left. Bluey is upset, but her mother counsels with an unexpectedly profound speech on the nature of loss. Then there’s a postscript: five years have passed, and Bluey returns to the campsite. The seed they planted is now a tree – and she hears a familiar French accent behind her. It’s a beautiful, ambitious piece of television that has reduced many a parent to tears. A third season of Bluey is in production, and looks set to elevate the show to even greater heights. Nevertheless, each new season sounds like an absolute production marathon. There are 52 episodes per season, and each episode takes five months to create. As such, Brumm’s day is split into tiny chunks, where he has to oversee a number of episodes in any of their 14 stages of production while simultaneously writing the bulk of the episodes. Generating new stories is becoming an uphill struggle. Brumm has two daughters, who were the age of Bluey and Bingo when the show was conceived, and formed the basis of the characters. But they are older now, and their day-to-day lives are getting further and further from Bluey’s. “It is getting harder to write, because a four and a six-year-old is so different to an eight-year-old,” he says. “It’s harder for me to see through their eyes. I feel like every time I start to understand a new phase, my kid’s already left it and is starting a new stage. I feel like, if I had a kid now, I could just sort that kid right out.” Is this his way of saying that he wants another kid? “No. Zero Chance!” Instead, as evidenced by the army of mums and dads who scour each episode for parenting tips, he will have to make do with sorting our kids out instead.