All Over the Place (TV programme)

Lore & Background

The first two series of All Over the Place featured attractions and events primarily in the United Kingdom. The third series took the same format but travelled around the USA; the fourth series was based in Australia and the fifth visited countries around Europe, while the sixth series explored North America (USA and Canada). The 7th and 8th series are about Asia. All Over the Place Asia Part 1 was broadcast on CBBC on Monday 16 January 2017, and included a new presenter Inel Tomlinson. The eighth series, All Over The Place Asia part 2, was broadcast on Saturday 6 January 2018, and every Saturday for 13 episodes.

Reader's Guide

All Over the Place is significant as a long-running BBC children's travel and entertainment series that introduced young viewers to unusual attractions and events around the world. The show's format combined educational content with comedy, music parodies, and presenter-led challenges. Its expansion from UK locations to the USA, Australia, Europe, and Asia demonstrated the BBC's commitment to global content for children. The series featured a rotating cast of CBBC presenters, giving many young television personalities exposure. The show's legacy includes its distinctive song parodies, which spoofed popular music hits, and its emphasis on quirky, offbeat destinations rather than typical tourist spots. By covering eight series across multiple continents, All Over the Place provided a broad, entertaining look at world cultures and oddities for its target audience.

Did You Know?

• The third series travelled around the USA, the fourth was based in Australia, the fifth visited Europe, and the sixth explored North America (USA and Canada).
• Places visited include the air guitar world championships, a bat hospital on the Isle of Wight, and the world's largest vacuum cleaner collection.

A Roaming Passport: The Show's Global Expansion

All Over the Place began its life as a BBC children's programme focused squarely on British attractions and oddities, with its first two series exploring corners of the United Kingdom. But the show's creators quickly decided that the world was too big to confine to one island. Series three, filmed in 2012 and broadcast in 2013, transplanted the format to the United States, with executive producer Louise Corbett and producer Maria Stewart guiding the production. The fourth series, airing from 2014, set its sights on Australia, while the fifth and sixth took the troupe across various European countries. The adventure then pivoted eastward: All Over the Place Asia Part 1 hit CBBC screens on Monday 16 January 2017, introducing new presenter Inel Tomlinson to the ensemble. Its follow-up, Asia Part 2, rolled out on Saturdays beginning 6 January 2018 and ran for fifteen consecutive weeks. This steady geographic expansion—from British bus stations to American malls, from Australian outback regattas to Asian landscapes—gave young viewers a genuine sense of the planet's breadth, all wrapped in the show's signature irreverent, curiosity-driven tone.

A Format Built on Wonder and Whimsy

The core premise was deceptively simple: a group of presenters would travel to genuinely unusual locations and let their curiosity drive the narrative. Episodes ranged from the Air Guitar World Championships to a bat hospital on the Isle of Wight, from the Superlambanana sculpture in Liverpool to a World War II veteran pigeon called Paddy. The show also embraced the wonderfully mundane, pausing at Preston Bus Station or Diggerland in Kent with the same enthusiasm it brought to Alnwick Castle's treehouse or Dickens World in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Beyond the destination, each series carried a toolkit of recurring segments that gave the programme its rhythm: "Things that stick out of the sea, river, or ground," "Grown-ups collect stuff too," "Why have we stopped here…because it's random," and "Bet you didn't know this about…" Among these, two stood as non-negotiable anchors. Nearly every episode closed with a competition, and the "Song" segment—where the cast performed a parody of a current chart hit—became the show's most anticipated musical moment. Together, these structural pillars created a reliable yet endlessly surprising template for young audiences.

Parody as a Creative Engine

One of the show's most distinctive and beloved features was its commitment to musical parody. Rather than simply playing background music, the presenters wrote and performed original songs that riffed on the biggest chart tracks of the moment, reimagining them around the week's location. In the UK-based series, the cast tackled everything from a JLS track reworked for Storybook Glen to a Kings of Leon cover for a "Burning House" segment, and a Katy Perry number for a rollercoaster visit. The second UK series pushed further, parodying Kanye West's "Gold Digger" for a gold-panning adventure, Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" for a penguin encounter, and AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" for a rugby outing. When the show moved to the United States, the parodies scaled up to match the setting: Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" became a Tombstone Cowboys anthem, Alicia Keys and JAY Z's "Empire State of Mind" was reworked for a place called Nyberg, and One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful" was adapted for Paul Bunyan Land. Each song served as both entertainment and a creative summary of the episode's theme, making the music an integral storytelling tool rather than mere decoration.

An Ensemble of CBBC Talent

All Over the Place was anchored by Ed Petrie, a former CBBC links presenter who served as the show's constant lead voice across its run. Yet the programme was never a solo enterprise. A rotating cast of co-presenters brought fresh energy to each series, drawing from a wide pool of CBBC hosts. Names that appeared alongside Ed included Chris Johnson, Cel Spellman, Richard Wisker, Barney Harwood, Naomi Wilkinson, the duo Sam & Mark, Michelle Ackerley, Lauren Layfield, Johny Pitts, and Iain Stirling. The American series in particular assembled a large team, pairing Ed with Naomi Wilkinson, Jonny Pitts, Cellach Spellman, Iain Stirling, Richard Wisker, and Michelle Ackerley for the 2013 broadcast. When the show expanded into its Asian instalments, the production welcomed Inel Tomlinson as a new face in the seventh series, signalling that the ensemble could evolve even as the core format endured. This rotating-cast approach meant that no two series felt quite identical, and young viewers got to see familiar CBBC personalities in a completely different, more adventurous context.

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