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> As a Queenslander now living in the UK

As a Brit now living in Queensland, thanks for swapping places with me. Appreciated. Cheers mate. Enjoy the rain and moaning.

As a Brit living in the US, I'm jealous. My comparative experience was seeing Peppa Pig for the first time. And it's crap.

I'd argue Peppa Pig is not crap, it's quite funny and surprisingly watchable by grownups. Not something I'd watch by myself, but I didn't get bored when I watched it with my daughter. Of course, the art style is no good, intentionally so, I suppose for budget reasons.

I'd argue Bluey is "a better Peppa": similar kind of humor (slightly more elaborate, but not by a lot) but with great artwork.

I think part of the problem is definitely that Bluey exists. It's a "Better Peppa" and when watching Peppa I can't help but compare them. Given I'm a Dad myself I find the difference in the Dad characters to be illuminating: Daddy Pig is a klutzy idiot who, more often than not, makes mistakes other have to fix. By comparison Bandit is an incredible parent (maybe too incredible at times, so says my ego)

Among my friends who are also fathers we're in agreement that Daddy Pig is in for an episode titled "Shared Custody".

Meanwhile Bandit talks and acts like a real person would - well, at least one with top-tier parenting skills.

There have been articles written - including words from the writer of the show - that mention the issue of Bandit's impossible dad standards.

So yeah, don't take Bandit as the benchmark for being decent, but as something to aspire to.

I figure that in a world where good role models are lacking for men in so many ways, here's a good one.

Unlike Bandit, Daddy Pig didn't have to fight in War on Terror so he doesn't have to compensate.

Peppa hanging up on Suzy because she has just been able to whistle following basic instructions while Peppa has been frustrated to discover she can't do it is stuck in my head.

That might not entirely be an accident, given Joe Brumm was originally an animator that worked on Peppa Pig and decided he wanted to do an Australian version of it when he moved back home.

Peppa pig is crap. Full stop.

Peppa just feels like one more of those random grab bag of terrible kids shows. There's no comfort like bluey has, no quiet episodes. It's just noise for the children, with rather dumb, flat characters

My kids will watch it, if someone like Grandma or the neighbor put it on, but their attention wanders. Bluey? They stay locked on for the entire duration of the episode

How old are your kid? I would argue Bluey is for an older audience. A 3 year old can never fully appreciate Bandit.

2 and 3. They love Bingo and Bluey but are indifferent to Bandit and Chili

Hey wait, without the original Peppa Pig, we'd have never got the MeatCanyon version of it.

Oddly just watched my first meatcanyon video today on pirate software and now seeing it mentioned again.

"Full stop"? You didn't even explain why. If anything, it's a comma, not a full stop.

The accent. The “stories”. The shallowness.

Should I keep going?

Try Hey Duggee - it's not as explicitly British-coded, but there's a ton of stuff in there if you were watching Spaced in your late teens and now find yourself a parent…

Seconded, Hey Duggee is a fantastic show. In a way it's the anti-Bluey - same delightful vibes, just as playfully animated, but intentionally ridiculous (and, to me, hilarious) stories.

There are plenty of great TV shows and movies set in London at least.

Its weird - I know about little american towns like Boulder, Colorado. I've never been there. But I know what it looks like because its featured - or at least mentioned - in plenty of movies and shows.

But the population of Boulder is just 100k. Australia has lots of way bigger cities - like Brisbane, Queensland (population 2.8 million) or Perth, WA (2.4 million) that are never depicted on screen. Even on Australian TV, I basically never see brissie or perth shown at all. I only know what they look like because I've visited.

But maybe that's normal in the english speaking world - at least outside the US. We've gotta raise our game and make more good content.

Part of the problem is selling into America - as an American, I can recognize London (smog and Sherlock Holmes!), Paris (Eiffel Tower), Sydney (Seashell Opera House), and New Zealand (Middle Earth).

I can't recognize Brisbane (and visiting it would feel like visiting Bluey).

Producers are SCARED of using unrecognizable areas (and/or for live-action, just film near where everyone is located).

If it makes you feel better, the USA has tons of large cities - far north of 100k, north of 1 million (especially if considering urban areas), that rarely or ever get featured in TV or movies; and if they do, it's often older ones.

Which is sad, mind you. Every city should have its own feel (too many places now feel like suburbs of Los Angeles, even in Europe or Asia), its own beer, its own food, its own media and music.

I don’t think it’s just unrecognisable places, it’s non American culture. Australia has made a bunch of really good shows. But it’s often quite Australian. I think it’s hard to break through on a meaningful level.

>I can't recognize Brisbane

Eh, lumping the gold-coast in with Brisbane is easy enough. Tanned bodies, barrel waves, way more tourists than you expect... it's basically California except it faces east, not west.

Boulder's metro area is around 330k - not quite "small town". That 100k is people inside one of the local government boundaries of the area. The US Census considers 5k to be the upper limit of a small town.

Brisbane is often called a "big country town" by other Australians, and it's 2.8 million people, so don't take that phrase too strongly :)

That said, agreed with the GP - places like Boulder, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, or New Orleans are places that we know about through culture and are internationally recognised, while being much smaller than Australian cities. That's mostly a factor of a huge amount of English-speaking media being from the US.

Australia attempts to counter this through laws requiring a certain quota of Australian content in the media, but that hasn't really worked - and is one of the factors which spawned many Australian reality TV shows.

New Orleans is tiny by global scale and not very large even in the US. It is, however, culturally unique (there is nothing else even close) and strategically insanely important.

Plenty of towns and cities in the UK are also totally unique culturally.

I visited Edinburgh a couple years ago and was blown away by the city and its people. God, everyone I met was so funny and interesting. But it’s almost never depicted on tv, outside of the occasional BBC crime drama or something. And those usually don’t get much air time outside of the UK. Peaky blinders has done an amazing job telling some of the history of Birmingham. I want more of that! The world is just so big and interesting. Far bigger than Hollywood will ever bother to portray.

Do Americans know what stoke on Trent looks like? Or Derby? U.K. towns of similar size

You might have heard of Aberdeen I guess. But have you heard of Geelong in Australia?

> Do Americans know what stoke on Trent looks like

American here. Literally the only thing I know about Stoke on Trent is that Messi would struggle there during a cold rainy night.

Peppa Pig doesn't attempt to portray a particular place afaik. Axel Scheffler's books often have visual references to Blackheath/Greenwich, with particular places often recognisable. Perhaps you think those are crap too, though.

Oh, I know. But Peppa is resoundingly British even if it's not deliberately channeled. It still makes me think of home.

Were you longing for all locations being on hills, or endless roadwork done by Mr. Bull?

I'm surprised I haven't seen a "visit Brisbane" (or at least "visit Australia") tourism campaign featuring Bluey anywhere. The show makes it look like an amazing place to visit and live.

They definitely have been using it in tourism campaigns, especially with Bluey's World: https://teq.queensland.com/au/en/industry/what-we-do/marketi... https://readytorumble.com.au/advertising/for-real-life

It really is an amazing place to live (although hot in the summer!), but career opportunities can be limiting in Australia and Brisbane. Catriona Drummond touches on the same in her substack [1] mentioned in the OP:

> As I mentioned, before Bluey I’d resigned myself to the fact that if I wanted to achieve something resembling my ‘full potential’ on a technical level as an artist, I would have to not only probably move to the United States [...] > Even deeper than that, was the pervasive thought that perhaps for my whole life I was just never going to be in the right place at the right time. That being from somewhere like Brisbane just meant I was doomed.

[1]: https://goodsniff.substack.com/p/creating-bluey-tales-from-t...

It is!

As a life long Melbournian, I absolutely loved how intensely Brisbane Bluey is. I know from the outside many see oz as the unified thing but the differences between cities can be drastic. Even between Hobart and Launceston in Tassie is significant.

It is like the works of Stuart McMillen (https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/), and how they depict Canberra in a way the locals can really appreciate.

I cannot agree with this enough :)

I live right in Red Hill. Bluey is literally my home! This is my neighbourhood! This is the first time I've ever felt that... and its amusing to feel that as a person in my mid 30s from a childrens show.

I love Brisbane so much, and this article captures the uniqueness so well.

You should watch Harrow, too. It’s a bit cliched as a police procedural, but they show a “TV version” of Brisbane: everyone lives in beautiful big Queenslanders, it’s sunny all the time, etc.

Extremely well said, as someone from the inner west suburbs I totally get it. Brisbane is having it's time in the sun, we deserve it!

Boy Swallows Universe felt pretty accurate (I grew up near Darra), but not in a good way!

I actually didn't realise how Brisbane it is until I stayed at southbank and wandered around the CBD a little bit. Even curlews were new to me, I couldn't believe it when I first saw one, I thought it was a statue.

When visiting Los Angeles a few weeks ago from Sydney, it was wonderful to see relos’ kids watching Bluey on Disney Plus, in top spot too. Everyone loves it. Heartwarming.

The setting to me felt oddly specific, but I didn't realise it refers to a particular place and isn't just a collection of all things Australia.

Well well I think you owe the world, as well as some daughters, to go through your memory of place and fish out street-view references for scenes...

Please! :-)

I'm afraid I don't have the specific episodes burned into my brain well enough to remember the names of them all. :)

That said, one that's burned into my brain is when they're walking along the South Bank riverside; the episode is apparently called "Ice Cream". The shot at ~0:48 in this video: https://youtu.be/cBti7aQBMk4?si=o3sWwfKJwQ-VEa8e&t=48 Is approximately from here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y1UmtCK5si8drVaD7 - It's not exactly the same as the show, but that's more a limitation of Google Maps; I bet you could recreate the shot. There's also usually an ice cream vendor just about there. :)

The bridge in the background is Victoria Bridge, the clock on the right is the Suncorp building (I think now demolished), the weird multi-part building next to it is Brisbane Square Library (now also a Suncorp building), and the arched building to the right of that is the Treasury Building (formerly the casino).

The rest of the shots in that episode are from various other parts in the parklands if you walk along it, including the lagoon beach, fountains, and walkway. The whole area (and the ibises) are an iconic part of Brisbane, as a legacy of Expo 88.

Aside from that, I think quite a lot of the shots in the city take place in real places, whether recognisable places like Mt Coot-Tha or random shops in the suburbs.

I haven’t watched any scenes from Bluey before (though I have a newborn now so I suspect that will soon change), but I lived in southbank for a few years during uni, basically right beside the cultural center bus stop.

I watched the clip and within a few seconds I knew exactly where in the parklands they were. Very cool, thanks for sharing. I had a similar feeling of under representation (for lack of a better term?) most of my life and while classic shows like Kath and Kim or either of the soaps show pretty quintessentially Aussie home interiors and outdoor areas, it still feels very Sydney/Melbourne.

The other show recently I’d say gave us that Brisbane feel (and a bit of homesickness, we live in NYC atm) was Love on the Spectrum: Australia. One of the guys is a bus driver in Brisbane and we’d often pause it to try and figure out if we could recognise which route.

I've ridden a bus with that bloke before, very nice!

I used to work for Suncorp (~10 years ago) in Brisbane square, pretty sure they are no longer using the building and it’s now a super company.

I’ve not watched Bluey (don't have kids of my own or niblings the right age), but am looking forward to when the time comes, so I can point out places I know.

Like many here, I grew up in Brisbane but moved elsewhere for opportunities etc. Given the cost of everything there these days I doubt I’ll make a permanent move back, but I do get nostalgic seeing the locations and the little details represented so well.

One of the last scenes from "The Sign" is based on the Mount Coot-tha Summit Lookout. Lots of fond memories there, including a proposal in my family.

And it's 20 minutes from the CBD!

Don't feel too bad.

Whenever you see "America" in a tv/movie, it's actually Canada (Vancouver).

A bunch of them are literally filmed in Brisbane! Famously, it was used as NYC in Thor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMAzGeL4TW8

Its the plants and trees that I love. Makes me feel homesick for the north when I see the Poinciana trees.

> it's so rare to see it actually represented as itself

Peak Qld as Qld on film was very likely the moon party in He Died With A Felafel In His Hand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gug5ViK3KSw

.. at least IMHO.