The Brilliant World of Tom Gates Returns to Sky Kids and NOW for a Third Series of Doodletastic Adventures
The hugely-popular, BAFTA Scotland award-winning kids show The Brilliant World of Tom Gates returns to Sky Kids and NOW with a third series of epic episodes in January. Tom, the eponymous hero, excellent doodler and enthusiastic avoider of homework, embarks on twenty more rib-tickling adventures at home and at school, with his friends and family.
Favourite characters return for some more hilarious comedy adventures including arch-nemesis Marcus, forbearing teacher Mr Fullerman and long-suffering sister Delia. This series sees a host of brand new characters join the gang including cheeky, football-loving Kit, Delia’s cool bestie Avril and one of Tom’s newest friends, bass-playing, soccer star Celeste, who has bags of energy and is willing to give anything a try. Celeste has a cochlear implant and likes to teach her friends sign language to pass on secret messages. The National Deaf Children Society advised the producers on the visual portrayal of Celeste in the series.
The sparkling voice cast includes Mark Bonnar (Line of Duty, Shetland) as Mr Fullerman, Catherine Tate (Catherine Tate Show, Doctor Who, Billionaire Boy) as Mum, Bonnie Langford (The Masked Dancer, Eastenders) as tuneful teacher Mrs Nap, Logan Matthews (Spud, Unbeatable) as Tom and newcomers Poppy Butler as Celeste and Henry Beale as Kit.
A Sky Original kids series featuring a modular mixed-media magazine format, The Brilliant World of Tom Gates is based on the award-winning, multi-million-copy-bestselling Tom Gates books written and illustrated by Liz Pichon and published by Scholastic. The series will be available across all Sky platforms – Sky Kids Channel, Sky Kids app, NOW, Sky Go, Sky+, Sky Q, Stream and Glass and accessible on BT and Virgin Media.
In these new episodes Tom tries to catch a fly, starts a secret club, meets a bug expert, annoys his grumpy sister Delia, makes friends with a pigeon, rocks out with his band Dog Zombies and much, much more.
Included in every episode are short creative ideas for more Tom Gates fun as Tom and his friends show viewers amazing things to make, like a paper plate guitar or a slinky guitar, cool things to doodle, including a brilliant band poster and a speedy snail slide, and great games to play, like Spot the Odd Socks and Count the Pesky Pigeons.
In addition, Tom Gates’ hilarious signature songs continue to entertain viewers, with ten new witty ditties written by songwriter Mark Flannery and Liz Pichon.
“I love playing Tom because he’s very similar to me in that he gets up to lots of pranks and is very cheeky,” says 13 year old Logan Matthews. “In this series Tom is up to his usual tricks – he lets a pigeon loose in the classroom, he gets bossed around by his sister Delia and, worst of all, he gets stuck in a life with Marcus Meldrew!”
Liz Pichon’s award-winning book series, published by Scholastic, has sold more than 16.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 47 languages. The heavily illustrated novels, in handwritten font with Tom’s doodles and pictures embellishing the text, document in hilarious detail his everyday trials and tribulations at home and school which all kids can relate to. The 21st book in the series, Tom Gates: Five Star Stories (Hooray!), was released in September.
The Brilliant World of Tom Gates is produced by TG Entertainment Ltd – a company jointly owned by Black Camel Pictures and Wild Child Animation. The Executive Producers are Ken Anderson from Wild Child Animation, Arabella Page Croft from Black Camel, author illustrator Liz Pichon, and Ian France, Commissioning Editor at Sky. The Series Director is George Sawyer and Series Producer is Sueann Rochester. Head Writer on the show Ben Ward is joined by new writing talent Jo Neary, Nadia Shireen and Sarah Mills and animation production services are provided by Wild Child Animation.
