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The world of the Piplings is Nara, a wonderful, natural paradise where they explore the freedom of nature and help to preserve beauty and peace.

In one episode of the programme Waybuloo, Yok Tok is concerned with keeping his ‘happy plant’ cheerful, another features the Piplings keeping a bubble up in the air to preserve its beauty and serenity. It is an unreservedly contented and carefree atmosphere.

At frequent intervals, the crystals start chiming and it’s ‘Time for yogo!’. When the Piplings are enjoying themselves, they experience ‘buloo’, a state of happiness, which makes them float up into the air. They then perform a series of yoga moves, named after natural objects such as ‘tree’, ‘fish’, ‘wave’, ‘shell’. These are taken straight from yoga and can easily be identified as such. During these activities, the Pipkins talk to the viewer, urging: ‘You do it!’ After yogo, they float up into the air again.

Christian concern

Real children are featured in the programme too, and are known as Cheebies. They come into Nara to find the Piplings and invariably join in when it gets to ‘yogo time’. The yoga positions become much more recognisable when the Cheebies do them and include the initial lotus position with the fingertips of the thumb and first finger joined above the knees. As they perform this lotus position, the Cheebies hum a single note, while the crystals chime on the sundial record player contraption, causing the Pipkins to float into the air and attain ‘buloo’ once more, closing their eyes in ecstasy.

Christians are concerned about this programme because it openly promotes the religious practice of yoga to children at several points in each episode. It presents happiness as something that can be gained through a series of yoga moves and chants and it shows children levitating the Piplings through their meditation.

Christians have been very vocal in their criticism of the programme, partly because of the coercion of children, but also because of the lack of accurate representations of the Christian faith in BBC broadcasts. Imagine the scorn if Teletubbies featured children praying to Jesus about the situations they faced in life! Imagine the outrage if viewers were encouraged to pray along too! Yet this is the level of religious participation encouraged by Waybuloo.

BBC replies

The BBC has replied to many emails of complaint with the following statement: ‘We assure you that it’s not the intention of programme makers to promote any one religion or religious practices. However, we do wish to reflect the experiences of children living throughout Britain in our storylines. I’m sure you’d also agree that encouraging and helping children to be active and healthy can only be a good thing.

‘We make programmes within a multi-faith, multi-cultural society and we also have to bear this in mind when making children’s series.’

The blogger ‘No Way Waybuloo’ on http://blog.echurchwebsites.org.uk has pointed BBC and Ofcom to Ofcom’s code of practice.

She writes: ‘CBeebies is aimed at very young children and I am concerned that this is effectively “religion by stealth” which your broadcasting code 4.4 cites against. In a promotional DVD distributed by the BBC (paid for by public expense) the episode featured showed a group of children levitating the characters using yogic powers. This is commonplace in Waybuloo’s episodes and contradicts code 4.7 which states that a programme should not “Contain claims that a living person (or group) has special powers or abilities and must treat such claims with due objectivity and must not broadcast such claims when significant numbers of children may be expected to be watching (in the case of television)”.’

Broadcasting law

The laws of broadcasting broken by the BBC in this matter are such that Christians would be quite justified in getting really quite angry. However, it is probably more productive to avoid getting hysterical and to consider instead how discussions about the programme could open up conversations that point others to Christ as we give the reasons for the faith that we have.

How about questioning what the path to happiness really is? Or why not try to open a discussion about the age at which we expect children to be aware of spiritual things?

We could openly consider the best way to introduce children to our beliefs in a way that will encourage them to be independent thinkers. Within conversations like these we could talk about what matters to us and point out the reasons for which Christians are meant to be joyful in life!

Most of the messages of Waybuloo will float high over the heads of most pre-schoolers, but the conversations that we have with our friends and colleagues about the programme may prompt us all to explore deeper truths for ourselves.

Waybuloo: the path to happiness?

Christian concern

BBC replies

Broadcasting law

Eleanor Margesson

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