What’s your favourite idea? Mine is a psychological horror comedy with puppets riffing on vintage children’s television. I’m not alone in that, either, as proven by the astronomical success of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared on YouTube, where it has racked up more than 280 million views since debuting in 2011.
The fever dream show follows Red Guy, Yellow Guy and Duck as they are taught a series of harrowing life lessons on topics ranging from time to love and technology to dieting.
Running through all the episodes are hints towards an overarching story that fans have meticulously combed through, dreaming up a huge stack of theories on what might be going on and why. They’ve had little new material to mull over during a six-year hiatus, but Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is finally back, this time on television, courtesy of Channel 4 and taking an expanded 25-minute format to boot.
“I suppose it’s a harder sell than a normal show, considering we haven’t made a TV show before and it’s quite unusual,” co-creator Joe Pelling told RadioTimes.com on shopping the series. “It’s not for everyone, I suppose. And I think we were very lucky to pitch it to Channel 4 at the right time and they seemed to get it. Not everyone we pitched it to ‘got it’ and I think the phrase they came back with was it was ‘quite specific’. So maybe that’s a euphemism for ‘it’s too weird and we don’t like it’.”
Or perhaps a ruder word beginning with ‘s’, speculates Baker Terry, a writer on the original DHMIS and co-creator of the television version, along with a returning Becky Sloan. The show was picked up by Channel 4 in July 2020, but the hard work was far from over. Now, the trio had to crack how to expand on their “four-minute little musical number” to fill a block of terrestrial programming.
Pelling continued: “It being its own strange thing works on the internet, but you’ve got to find a reason for these stories to work over half an hour. So I think, for us, we needed to dig into the characters a bit more and give them their own little motives and things. Rather than just a theme that builds to a shocking moment, we were like, ‘Well, how would the characters react?’ I think that when you write in half an hour, you have to take that into consideration.”
The team welcomed three new writers as well as story editor Megan Ganz (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Community) to assist with the challenge, but stayed true to the spirit and tone of their original vision. That includes more nonsensical musings on the world around us, in the spirit of earlier quotes like “green is not a creative colour” and “planets live inside the moon”, a writing style that Pelling sums up as “the funniest, most idiotic way of describing something”.
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On the show’s absurd lexicon, Sloan added: “It’s tricky because it might sound like the most boring, crap thing ever on paper, but then in the performance, it might be hilarious… Sometimes we end up just changing stuff on set as well, and sometimes that’s when the best stuff comes, I think. Luckily, Channel 4 have just given us so much creative freedom; we can’t deviate loads from the scripts, but we do have a bit of freedom to play around on set.”
While no one can say with absolute certainty what Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is about – beyond the creators, who choose not to – there is an obvious intricacy to the work that has built a loyal fanbase devoted to decoding it. There’s plenty more mysteries to fuel the fire in the latest episodes, which are seemingly set after the perplexing finale to the YouTube series (if the wall calendar is anything to go by). However, Pelling revealed that continuity was never a major factor in crafting the new season.
“It’s weird because we don’t tend to pin down that stuff too much for ourselves, I think we try to just go with what feels right,” he said. “But I suppose it’s like, to an extent, the characters live in a kind of weird, timeless world where they just repeat lessons. You don’t know what day it is or what period of time it is. It feels a bit like this could be a prequel or a sequel, we don’t really think it matters in some strange way.”
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While it would be near-impossible to keep up with every new theory, the creators are engaged with their thriving fandom, whose analytical dissection of the show “feeds back into” the making of it – encouraging ever more hidden details. Suffice to say, just like the original shorts, the Channel 4 series will benefit from a rewatch (or 12).
“It’s fun to plant little Easter eggs in the show and see if people will find them – and they always do,” said Sloan. “Like the littlest thing, you could embroider a little code on a post-it note on the fridge and people will zoom in and find it. It’s so fun playing around with that stuff. And the new series is littered with eggs. So many Easter eggs, actual eggs…”
After such a long absence, the return of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared – in all its existential glory – is an absolute delight. Far from resting on its laurels, the show has grown more ambitious than ever with a raft of new characters, ideas and songs, culminating in a trippy finale that appears to leave the door open for future stories. Suffice to say, we have our fingers firmly crossed for season 2, even if it means more torment for Red Guy, Yellow Guy and Duck.
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is available to stream on All4. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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