Lift Off (Australian TV series)

Lore & Background

The series centered on a group of seven children aged 4 to 10, from diverse cultural, social, and familial backgrounds. Each episode followed a live-action storyline about the children's problems with growing up, parents, and social issues, and included segments of animation, puppetry, documentary, songs, stories, and word games. Major puppet characters included EC, a sentient rag doll; Lotis, an artificial intelligence lift; Rocky, a frill-necked lizard anthropologist; and the backsacks, limbless eccentrics living on the children's backs.

Reader's Guide

Lift Off broke with children's television conventions by being linked to school curricula and by aiming to develop competent, autonomous children. Its development began in December 1988, involving extensive consultation with early childhood specialists and a seminar in July 1989 at Erskine House in Lorne, Victoria, with 62 participants from Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Howard Gardner visited in July 1991 to examine the program and wrote a paper linking his multiple intelligence theories to the series. The program's inclusion in the school curriculum was a world first, and it sought to stimulate all aspects of child development through a blend of animation, drama, performance, puppetry, and documentary.

Did You Know?

• The puppet characters were designed by illustrator Terry Denton and constructed by the series' own workshop team.
• Lotis, the lift, is an artificial intelligence that can take children anywhere in space and time.

Creative Vision & Development Philosophy

Lift Off was conceived in December 1988 around a provocative question: what shape and direction should a children's program for the twenty-first century take, grounded in the best available understanding of young minds and in what would best serve Australian culture? Developed and produced by Patricia Edgar, the series deliberately refused to accept that anyone had truly mapped the upper limits of children's abilities. Rather than following a rigid curriculum, the show drew loosely on Dr. Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence framework from Harvard University, weaving together animation, live-action drama, performance, puppetry, and documentary into a single thematically unified episode. A dedicated research phase began in early 1989, consulting early childhood specialists, academics, and practitioners across fields including language, literacy, music, play, and art. The result was a program that treated its young audience as capable, curious thinkers rather than passive recipients of simplified content, and it broke with convention by becoming the first children's television series to be formally linked to the national school curriculum through the Curriculum Corporation of Australia.

The Puppet & Character Universe

The puppet world of Lift Off stands as one of its most distinctive features, with characters designed by illustrator Terry Denton and physically constructed by the renowned sculptor Ron Mueck. At the center sits EC, a sentient rag doll with an amorphous head that barely suggests facial features, serving as a confidante and friend to the child cast. Then there is Lotis, a sentient lift housed in the apartment building where two families reside. To adults she appears as an ordinary, occasionally unreliable elevator that greets riders vocally, but to the children she is a mentor and fellow explorer whose computer matrix screen displays clues, diagrams, and games, and whose doors can open onto the Moon, a beach, or the ocean floor. Rocky, a frill-necked lizard anthropologist and documentary cameraman, observes the human characters and presents humorous films to an audience of fellow lizards. The limbless Backsacks travel on children's backs, offering a world-weary perspective on being thrown, hung, and stuffed. Beverley, a pot with a long stalk and a single eye, surveys the natural world, while her Patches break free to animate and reform into new shapes.

Format & Episode Architecture

Aimed at viewers aged three to eleven, Lift Off assembled a remarkably layered episode structure that refused to settle into a single genre. Each installment opened with a live-action storyline following a core group of seven children, aged four to ten, drawn from diverse cultural, social, and familial backgrounds. Their play, interactions, and inquiries formed the thematic spine of the episode, exploring subjects like jealousy, loneliness, and anger through stories and locations. The parents of these children appeared in every episode, reflecting a variety of family situations. Around this dramatic core, the show wove in short animation, puppetry, documentary segments, songs, stories, and word games. Two principal animation segments were The Munch Kids, a three-minute piece in which edited discussions with children tackling the episode's theme were visually interpreted by animators, and the animated Feature Story. The major puppet segment, The Wakadoo Café, directed by Paul Nichola and written by Bob Ellis, Tony Watts, and Nancy Black, served as a bustling social hub with guest performers. Documentary material ranged from footage of Aboriginal children in Arnhem Land, shot by Stephen Johnson, to segments showcasing acrobats, gymnasts, and dressage events.

Legacy & Educational Impact

Broadcast on ABC Television from 1992 until its conclusion in 1995, Lift Off occupied a singular position in Australian broadcasting history. Its formal integration into the national school curriculum through the Curriculum Corporation of Australia was a world first, setting a precedent for how television could function as a pedagogical tool rather than merely entertainment. The series explicitly challenged the prevailing assumption that children's cognitive and emotional capacities had been fully measured and understood, asserting instead that no one had truly gauged those limits. By combining elements of animation, drama, performance, puppetry, and documentary within a thematically driven structure, the show stimulated multiple facets of a child's development simultaneously. The inclusion of original footage of Aboriginal children in Arnhem Land, captured by Stephen Johnson, presented the world as an accessible and exciting environment requiring understanding and care. Lift Off's ambition to develop competent, autonomous children through a program that acknowledged no accepted wisdoms about their abilities made it a landmark in children's media design.