For years, the CBeebies Bedtime Story was a secret known only by parents of the very young. Every day, the final hour of the channel’s programming would gradually wind down, its DayGlo thud replaced by something more muted before the final send-off – a friendly face from the telly reading a hushed recital of a children’s book. Bedtime Stories was a long, shallow glide to the runway. Tonally, it was perfect.
But now everyone’s in on it. Pound for pound, Bedtime Stories might be the most star-studded programme the BBC makes. Chris Evans has read some stories. James McAvoy has read some. Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, David Hasselhoff, Josh Homme. Tonight’s Bedtime Story hits another new high, being read by Dolly Parton. Booking-wise, it’s coup after coup after coup. So who is the magician behind it all?
“I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily a massive change,” says CBeebies controller Kay Benbow. “We’ve always had amazing people. Even before we left London [for Salford] we had people like Sheila Hancock and Patrick Stewart and Derek Jacobi. It really just plays into my mantra of wanting the very best for the very young. The whole point is that we want great storytellers, because great storytelling is at the heart of everything we do.”
So if having stellar guests has always been a forte of Bedtime Stories why are people only latching on to it now? Benbow attributes the seachange to a couple of things. The first is that CBeebies has become more prominent on social media, spending more time irreverently sympathising with knackered parents than pushing out press releases. And the second?
“The big turning point was Tom Hardy,” says Benbow. “He and his agents approached us because he wanted to do it for his kids. I’m so grateful to him, because he raised the profile of Bedtime Stories and brought people to it who wouldn’t necessarily think to look at CBeebies.”
Ah, yes. Tom Hardy. Undeniably, he was the breakout moment for Bedtime Stories; the moment when it stopped being something to simply plonk your kids in front of, and became something for mums to watch just as avidly as their toddlers. Hardy’s three appearances so far have been a sensation, not just because they have prompted those without children to tune in, but because he absolutely sells the hell out his stories.
His most recent episode – a reading of Odd Dog Out – was filmed in tribute to his dog Woody, who died earlier this year. And, no word of a lie, it is an absolute tearjerker. Hardy approaches it like a full-blown heartrending drama, refusing to dial it back just because it’s a gussied-up Jackanory hidden away at the bottom of the EPG. It honestly might count as some of his best work. It has even been nominated for a Royal Television Society award.
And this would appear to be the secret Bedtime Stories booking strategy – there are no set rules. When I slightly cynically ask Benbow if Hardy was brought in to appeal to the mums, she goes to great lengths to point out that it was him who approached her. It was important for him to make something that his own children could watch, she says, and this seems to go for all the participants. Suranne Jones travelled up to Manchester just to film her Bedtime Story, because she wanted to do something for her son. Josh Homme asked to read a book that he reads his own children at night. Dolly Parton has a charity that donates children’s books to libraries. There are other big names on the horizon and, although I was unable to prise them out of Benbow, they too approached CBeebies rather than the other way around.
It isn’t all wall-to-wall A-list megastars (for my money, Nadiya Hussein remains the gold standard storyteller to whom all others should aspire) and this is apparently for good reason. “It’s about getting a range of people,” Benbow says. “We take diversity very seriously. We want all children to see something of their lives, or themselves, or people like them. But the most important thing is that we have good storytellers. If you don’t do it for the right reasons, people will see right through it.”
