Underplayed Gems

Hoopla Doopla!

Hoopla Doopla! poster
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

Six colorful characters live in a whimsical town and have playful adventures together. Aimed at young children, the show uses physical comedy and sounds instead of spoken words.

playfulenergeticlightheartedwhimsicalbrightupbeatsimplegentle

What happens

Hoopla Doopla! (stylised all lower case; Chinese: 奇妙小镇) is a joint Australian-Chinese live-action non-verbal children's TV series, which was first broadcast from February 2014. It was created by Melinda Wearne and Ron Saunders using cast and production teams from both countries. It was co-directed by Mark Barnard and Liang Tong. The series was filmed during six months up to late 2013, using a 2250 square metre studio, "about the size of a football field" containing the fictional town of Hoopla. Producers were Wearne (of The Content Agency) and Saunders (Beyond Screen Production) for Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Zhao Qian for China Central Television (CCTV). The studio was located outside the Chinese city of Zhuozhou – two hours south-west of capital Beijing. Post-production occurred in Australia. Hoopla Doopla! targets children from the age of three to seven. Its on-screen cast of six characters are Jango (Daniel Gorski), Mimi (Kate Wright), Zap (Simon Wright), Bop (Xie Ning), Squidgie (Liu Wanting) and Ziggy (Zhang Haoran). They are augmented by an off-screen Narrator (Zindzi Okenyo). It began broadcast by ABC from 10 February 2014 and by CCTV from mid-February, for 52 episodes of 12 minutes each. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.