Bluey, Arthur, Heartstopper: Trauma, regret draw adult audiences to kids’ shows

Gentle, funny plotlines. Kindness, friendship, emotion, vulnerability and love. A new generation of children’s shows are healing adults too.

Perhaps top of this list is Bluey, the Australian animated series that recently announced a break, sparking an outcry across X and Instagram. Since its inception in 2018, the show has garnered a cult following among children, their parents and even child-free adults. In the final episode of Season 3, the Australian cattle dog Bluey and her nuclear family sell their home and prepare to move to another city.
Wherever they end up, chances are they’ll help each other adjust as they deal with the change. That has been the tone of the show so far. In a surprisingly moving moment in the third season, for instance, a game that had each child winning by turn, reverts to an old format. There are tears as some players lose, then laughter, then an excited passing of the parcel as the children hope to earn their win.
A boy loses consistently, but goes home happy. I think you are learning how to lose, his mother says.
Most of us were not taught how to lose. Only told how important it was to succeed…
In another such moment, Bluey’s mother Chilli gently explains infertility. “There’s something Aunty Brandy wants more than anything,” she says. “But she can’t have it, and there’s not really anything anyone can do.”
The show is currently streaming on DisneyPlus Hotstar, with episodes also available on YouTube. Here’s a look at others like it that offer a safe space and a bit of hand-holding for the adults too.
Arthur (1996-2022)
This animated TV series, based on the books by Marc Brown, aired for 25 years and enjoyed multigenerational fandom from the start. It follows an eight-year-old aardvark named Arthur Read, his preschooler sister DW, their toddler sibling, and their anthropomorphic animal friends, as they navigate new classmates, bullies, climate change and evolving family formats.
A teacher, Mr Ratburn, comes out as gay and marries his partner; Bitzi, a single mother and a newspaper editor, talks to her son Buster about the pain and the freedom she feels after her divorce; Binky the bully has a breakthrough, and learns there is nothing untoward about the fact that he loves butterflies, ballet and the clarinet.
It held up, even as its original fans entered their teens and 20s, because it was funny, smart, and kind. It even offers utopian dreams to the adult of today.
In Season 22, released in 2018 (episodes of the show are available on PBS Kids and on YouTube), a change in the school cafeteria menu kickstarts a movement that begins with “why can’t we find certain vegetables in the local market”, segues into air pollution and global warming, turns into a car-free campaign, and ends with a local student and her father, who owns a car dealership, switching to EVs. Utopian, but who couldn’t do with a dose of hope?
Heartstopper (2022-)
This Netflix adaptation of the coming-of-age graphic-novel series Heartstopper (Alice Oseman; 2019-23) addresses gender identity with an extra-light touch.
It features characters who are transgender, others who are bisexual but don’t know it yet, and a large population of teens who are simply gay or straight but pining in that way that only the chaos of one’s teen years makes possible.
The show is set in an English private school but has earned fans across age groups and around the world. Season 2 shot to No. 2 on Netflix’s list of most-watched shows worldwide, in the week of its release (July 31 – August 6, 2023).
The plot features gentle tales of love and heartbreak, early navigations of intimacy, balcony scenes and trips to Paris. The lead characters are Charlie, geeky and shy, and his 15-year-old classmate and boyfriend Nick, a rugby player navigating his identity with a refreshing sense of joyful confusion.
There are queer teachers, kind parents, silly squabbles, and everyone always makes up in the end.
Adults who choose to follow the teens’ tales each season can expect to feel a pang: Is this really what it could have been like?
Of course, the idealised world the show inhabits is unrealistic, even for today. In the real world, Kit Connor, who plays Nick, was grilled and bullied online and in interviews until he revealed himself to be bisexual. The cast had to rally around to help him through it all. That’s the real world for you — usually a baffling mix of good and evil.
The world of the show remains an unadulterated delight. Season 3 is due out in October.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010-20)
This colourful, magical animated world created for little girls spawned a generation of fans who were grown men and called themselves Bronies.
On Reddit, Facebook and YouTube, comments and threads feature posts by men who found themselves listening and following along as the show took on gender stereotypes, vulnerability, the reforming of bad apples, the trauma of growing up with a learning disorder, and the overwhelming power of friendships and loyalty.
There are jokes and witty banter, as well as relatively complex plotlines in which the ponies confront real conflicts and face real consequences, in a show designed to cater to a mixed audience of adults and children of different ages and interests.
In their comments, Bronies talk about how the series made them better friends, alleviated self-hatred, helped them access softer sides of themselves without shame.
There is even some scientific evidence of this. A 2015 paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Popular Television studied Brony fan discourse and reported that the show helped in “renegotiating male gender norms and constructing masculine identities”.
“Brony fandom offers a kind of joy that is hard to find among more traditional masculine discourse,” the paper states. (Six seasons are currently streaming on Netflix.)