Big Kids is a 13-episode children's comedy television series created by Lucy Daniel-Raby. The series is a British-American co-production of the BBC and the American network Noggin. It premiered on CBBC on BBC One on 27 September 2000 and on the Noggin channel on 29 January 2001. All 13 episodes were aired on Noggin's sister channel, Nickelodeon, from 9 to 30 March 2001.
Plot[]
The show follows the lives of the Spiller family: Simon, Kate, and their parents, Sarah, a piano teacher, and Geoff, a doctor. When the family attends a school charity event, a hypnotist and entertainer named Ming the Mind Master uses Sarah and Geoff in a performance. After the show is over, Kate and Simon realize that their parents have never been properly unhypnotized. At seemingly random moments, they black out and begin to act like children.
The two siblings have to deal with keeping their parents under control in their hypnotized state, trying to get their parents to believe what happens when they black out, and trying to discover what triggers the change. Simon tries to keep his parents' hypnosis a secret from his best friend, Jake, who lives across the street and often visits at inopportune times. During trances, Sarah and Geoff engage in behaviour for which they would otherwise scold their children, while Kate and Simon are forced to act like mature adults. According to Noggin, the show was meant to explore "the complex and sometimes chaotic relationship between parent and child."
Eventually, the children convince their parents by showing them filmed footage, and discover that the trigger is "ming", or any word with "ming" in it, just like the hypnotist's name. They finally track down Ming at a fête and convince him to 'unhypnotise' their parents, which appears to restore them to normal. However, their childish behaviour on a carousel leaves the children confused – whether Sarah and Geoff are acting like this deliberately, have fallen back into a state of hypnosis, or perhaps have always had the qualities of 'big kids' is left ambiguous.
Cast[]
- Duncan Duff as Dr. Geoffrey "Geoff" Spiller
- Imogen Stubbs as Sarah Spiller
- Matt Adams as Simon Spiller
- Kelly Salmon as Kate Spiller
- Sam Green as Jake Tyler
- Jasper Britton as Ming the Mind Master
- Amanda Fairbank-Hynes as Becky
- Barnaby Francis as Edward Bagley