'Beep and Mort', from Windmill theatre/film for ABC Kids in 2021, recalls glory days of Adelaide children's TV
Beep and Mort, the two characters emerging from Adelaide's Windmill Theatre Company play, became stars of Windmill Pictures children's television series for ABC Kids.
Beep and Mort, a mixed media series being made for ABC Kids in 2021, was another step in Adelaide’s Windmill Theatre Company’s move into film and a return to the city’s hallmark of producing children’s television show.
In 2023, the state government's South Australian Film Corporation announced $5.2 million funding over three years to a partnership with the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) to boost local screen industry development, including a second season of Beep and Mort.
Produced by Windmill Pictures, Beep and Mort was adapted from its sister theatre company’s children’s play Beep. It tells the story of two best friends from different worlds, solving their daily dilemmas and unexpected challenges through invention, play and adventure.
The Beep and Mort series, for pre-schoolers, was designed by Jonathon Oxlade and directed by Rosemary Myers, who both worked on Windmill’s first film Girl Asleep in 2016 with a success that encouraged the company’s move into films. Oxlade and Myers also worked on several Windmill live shows, including the recent stage adaptation of Bluey.
The Beep and Mort writing team was Charlotte Rose Hamlyn, Simon Butters, Amy Stewart, Hunter Page-Lochard, Wendy Hanna, and Lorin Clarke. Myers said the creating the series drew on the concept’s theatrical roots while also integrating new technologies: “The result is a contemporary hybrid form of puppetry that blends hand and rod puppets with post animated object puppets In a screen landscape dominated by animation, we want to create a textured, built world that children feel they can almost step into and walk around in.”
Beep and Mort was the first studio program for children made in South Australia for more than a decade. Major production investment was provided by Screen Australia and the ABC, with support from the South Australian Film Corporation. ABC Commercial held world distribution rights.
ABC head of children’s content Libbie Doherty believed the series would “gently ignite” the minds and “warm the hearts” of the broadcaster’s preschool audience: “From the minute Windmill pitched the series to us, we immediately fell in love with these two new preschool stars – the unique and incredibly cute Beep and Mort.”