The Story Makers

The Story Makers
Genre	Children's
Created by	Clare Bradley
Directed by	Stephen Cannon Tony Reed
Starring	Nick Mercer Aliex Yuill Danny John-Jules Michael Offei Dystin Johnson Lauretta Nkwocha Joe Vera Paul J Medford
Theme music composer	Francis Haines
Opening theme	Francis Haines Clare Bradley
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
No. of series	4
Production
Executive producer(s)	Clare Elstow
Producer(s)	Clare Bradley Tony Reed
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	15–20 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	CBeebies
Picture format	PAL
Audio format	Stereophonic sound
Original airing	2002

The Story Makers is a children's television programme broadcast on the BBC's pre-school digital television network, CBeebies. The Story Makers is set in a children’s library, and encourages literacy and creativity.

The programme

The programme starts as the library shuts in the evening. At the stroke of midnight, Jelly and Jackson (green and pink puppets who live in the library and hide in the daytime) come out and are joined by a guest presenter, one of the members of the Wordsworth family, who recites "The sun is down, the stars are bright, Story Makers come out at night". The Wordsworths together with Jelly and Jackson are the Story Makers.

Objects found in the library are put into the top of the story machine (transformed from a desktop computer); Jelly, Jackson and the story maker then recite "Imagine, imagine, imagine a story!"; and the story machine produces a book containing a story based on the object. The story in the book is then "read out" (although this is replaced on screen by live action or an animation). The first story is usually a Play Book (live action with small children), and the remaining stories are animated (cartoons, stop-motion animation, or puppets). The characters in the stories are fairly consistent, including Sniff and Wag (two puppet dogs), Blue Cow (a cartoon cow, created by Blue-Zoo), Kevin the Spaceman (puppet), and so on. There is always a Blue Cow story and a Play Book - the third story varies.

As dawn breaks, the Story Maker takes his or her leave ("Dawn is upon us, the morning is nigh, we've made our stories, so we bid you goodbye") and disappears, Jelly and Jackson hide, and the story machine turns back into a computer, but the books produced overnight remain for the librarian and children to find when the library opens in the morning.

The story makers

Jelly at a personal appearance in Birmingham in 2009

The story makers include:

The two puppet characters:

• Jackson (voiced by Nick Mercer who also provides the voice for Blue Cow) - Jackson is pink and porcupine-like and 7 years old.
• Jelly (voiced by Aliex Yuill) - green with hair sticking out and is 3 years old.

Seven Presenters:

• Milton Wordsworth (played by Danny John-Jules)
• Byron Wordsworth (played by Michael Offei)
• Rossetti Wordsworth (played by Dystin Johnson)
• Shelley Wordsworth (played by Lauretta Nkwocha)
• Blake Wordsworth (played by Paul J Medford)
• Webster Wordsworth (played by Joe Vera)
• Kristian Wordsworth (Played by Kristian 'Cod Eye' Pickering)

Each Wordsworth has magical story-making powers.

The Story Makers presenters are all played by actors.

The story makers are named after English poets, William Wordsworth, John Milton, Lord Byron, Dante Rossetti (or possibly Christina Rossetti), Percy Bysshe Shelley (or possibly Mary Shelley), William Blake, and John Webster.

External links

• CBeebies – The Story Makers at BBC Online
• The Story Makers at BBC Programmes
• The Story Makers at the Internet Movie Database
• The Story Makers at TV.com