Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks


Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks is an American-British-Irish computer-animated children's television series. The series was broadcast in the United States on PBS Kids, CBBC, CBeebies, and Qubo. It was also broadcast in Australia on ABC Kids.
The show chronicles the boyhood adventures of Piggley Winks, an anthropomorphic pig from Ireland, and how he relates these stories to his grandchildren as a grandfather in the modern day.
The story takes place on Raloo Farm in Skryne, County Meath, Ireland, where show creators Francis and Denise Fitzpatrick live.
The word "jakers" was originally a euphemism for "Jesus" in much of Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s, and was an exclamation of surprise, delight, dismay, or alarm. Piggley and his father exclusively use it to express their delight when they discover something on their adventures.
Notably, the show contains voiceover work by Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks.

Plot

Jakers! takes place in two different settings, in two different time periods.
In the present time, Piggley Winks lives in the United States and tells stories of his childhood in a rural area in the south of Ireland to his three grandchildren. In flashbacks, he is seen as a child, playing with his friends and going to school in rural Ireland in the mid-1950s. Most of the main characters are anthropomorphic animals—including Piggley and his family, who are all pigs. However, there are normal, non-anthropomorphic animals in the show as well.

Past

Piggley Winks lived with his parents Pádraig and Elly and his younger sister Molly at Raloo Farm in Ireland during the 1950s. His best friends are Dannan O'Mallard, a duck who lives in a hut by a pond with her rarely seen grandmother, and Fernando "Ferny" Toro, a young bull who lives with his widowed father, the Spanish blacksmith Don Toro in the village of Tara. Piggley's rival is the main antagonist, Hector McBadger.
Piggley lives his everyday life on the farm as a normal child, going to school, helping his parents, taking care of his sister, and having adventures, almost always followed by his friends. He has always been interested in stories and legends, and his fertile mind and mischievous spirit put him in many unpredictable situations, like believing fairies turned Ferny into a bug, trying to hatch a supposed dragon's egg, using the Salmon of Knowledge to pass the school exam, and even trying to capture the legendary Fir Darrig.
Each story also features a subplot featuring Wiley, the sheep. As the only sheep in the flock who can talk, he believes he is their natural leader, and tries to get the other sheep to do all kinds of different things, with varying degrees of success. He is later assisted by his mate, a female sheep named Shirley.
A running gag on the show is that Wiley's subplot and Piggley's plot would collide.
CommonSenseMedia explains that at the end of each episode there is a live-action segment, in which "group of children talk about their own experiences and feelings, reflecting on what the episode has been about".

Present

An elderly Piggley lives with his daughter Ciara and her three children, the twins Seán and Séamus, and their older sister Meg. Whenever the children have a issue, Piggley tells them one of his childhood stories as a moral lesson. The grandchildren are able to identify exaggerations in his stories.
The original American accents of Ciara and her children have been dubbed with English accents for broadcast in the United Kingdom.

Episodes

Cast

Main

Farm

Jakers! The Adventures Of Piggley Winks was shown on CBeebies and CBBC in United Kingdom from 2004 up until early 2011. It first aired in the United Kingdom on the CBBC Channel on September 6, 2004 and later was repeated on
CBeebies from February 13, 2006 on the BBC One strand at 3:25pm. But it didn't air on the CBeebies Channel until March 19, 2007, when the scheduling of CBeebies was changing. and Qubo, PBS Kids, and Sprout in United States.
9 Story Media Group currently distributes the series.
Reruns on PBS kids continued to air until August 31, 2008.
Home Media: From Paramount Home Entertainment
The Complete First Season 26 Episodes on 7 Disc Box Set
Special Features & Audio Commentaries
Including: The Pilot Episode
Date: October 31, 2006
The Complete Second & Third Seasons 26 Episodes on 7 Discs
Special Features & Audio Commentaries
Date: October 30, 2007

Reception

Critical response

CommonSenseMedia gave the show a rating of 4 stars out of 5, commenting "The animation is lovely, the characters are amusing and cute, and the lessons are so gently presented that it really is a pleasure to learn them."

Awards