Playdays (known as Playbus until 25 December 1989) was a children's television program from the UK.
The series ran from 17 October 1988 to 28 March 1997 on Children's BBC (CBBC), and was aired in reruns until 2004 (from 2002 until 2004, reruns were aired on CBeebies). The show was the successor of Play School, and, like its predecessor, was designed as an educational programme.
The creator Cynthia Felgate had been executive producer of Playschool. After the show was dropped from CBBC on BBC1, repeats were shown on CBBC on Nickelodeon until 23 July 1999, CBBC on BBC Choice (later known as CBeebies) and CBBC on BBC Two until it was axed in August 2004.
In 1989, the BBC insisted that the independent production company which made Playbus (Felgate Productions) change the programme's name after they received a complaint from the National Playbus Association.
Plot[]
The main characters of Playdays were puppets known as Why Bird (voiced and manipulated by Fiona Beynon Brown and latterly by Ellie Darvill), Peggy Patch (Sally Preisig) and Poppy, a cat (Sue monroe).
They were also accompanied by Mr Jolly (Robin Fritz, later Clive Duncan and then Andy Hockley), who would usually end each programme with a song (usually a nursery rhyme). There were also a number of human presenters including Zoë Ball, Trish Cooke and Dave Benson Phillips.
The show would begin with an animated title sequence of the Playbus driving along to the theme tune until it reached the bus stop, where characters on the bus were Why, Peggy, Dot, Humphry, Lizzie, Wobble and Mr. Jolly. The bus stopped at a different place each day. It was effectively several different TV series under one single branding.