{"id":23546,"date":"2022-10-11T12:50:19","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T10:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1719001"},"modified":"2022-10-11T13:19:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T11:19:12","slug":"dont-hug-me-im-scared-creators-on-bringing-the-viral-hit-to-television","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/dont-hug-me-im-scared-creators-on-bringing-the-viral-hit-to-television\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Hug Me I\u2019m Scared creators on bringing the viral hit to television"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By David Craig\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 11 October 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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What\u2019s your favourite idea? Mine is a psychological horror comedy with puppets riffing on vintage children\u2019s television. I\u2019m not alone in that, either, as proven by the astronomical success of Don\u2019t Hug Me I\u2019m Scared on YouTube<\/a>, where it has racked up more than 280 million views since debuting in 2011.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve had little new material to mull over during a six-year hiatus, but Don\u2019t Hug Me I\u2019m Scared is finally back, this time on television, courtesy of Channel 4 and taking an expanded 25-minute format to boot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose it\u2019s a harder sell than a normal show, considering we haven\u2019t made a TV show before and it\u2019s quite unusual,\u201d co-creator Joe Pelling told RadioTimes.com<\/a> on shopping the series. \u201cIt\u2019s 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 \u2018got it\u2019 and I think the phrase they came back with was it was \u2018quite specific\u2019. So maybe that\u2019s a euphemism for \u2018it\u2019s too weird and we don\u2019t like it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>

Or perhaps a ruder word beginning with \u2018s\u2019, 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 \u201cfour-minute little musical number\u201d to fill a block of terrestrial programming.<\/p>\n

Pelling continued: \u201cIt being its own strange thing works on the internet, but you\u2019ve 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, \u2018Well, how would the characters react?\u2019 I think that when you write in half an hour, you have to take that into consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team welcomed three new writers as well as story editor Megan Ganz (It\u2019s 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 \u201cgreen is not a creative colour\u201d and \u201cplanets live inside the moon\u201d, a writing style that Pelling sums up as \u201cthe funniest, most idiotic way of describing something\u201d.<\/p>\n