Sesame Tree

Sesame Tree
(l-r) Potto, Aunt Claribelle and Hilda the Irish Hare.
Genre	Educational
Theme music composer	Duke Special
Country of origin	Northern Ireland United Kingdom United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	40
Production
Running time	15 minutes
Production company(s)	Sixteen South Sesame Workshop
Release
Original network	BBC Two CBeebies
Original release	5 April 2008 – 2013
Chronology
Followed by	The Furchester Hotel

Sesame Tree is the UK version of Sesame Street made entirely in Northern Ireland, is a children's television series produced by Belfast-based production company Sixteen South and Sesame Workshop. The first episode aired on BBC Two in Northern Ireland on 5 April 2008 with the first series subsequently airing nationwide on CBeebies in August 2008.

In November 2010, a second series was launched, and broadcast on CBeebies from 22 November 2010.

The project has been under consideration since 2004; in Sesame Workshop’s presentation on their international projects, Northern Ireland was listed as a goal, with the intent of ‘building the Sesame model for respect and understanding curriculum across the sectarian divide."

In 2006, The American Ireland Fund provided support to realise the project. Additional funding was secured from the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) and the Northern Ireland Fund for Reconciliation. Funding for the second series is provided by IFI and Northern Ireland Screen.

The initial series of Sesame Tree comprised 20 seventeen-minute programmes, aimed at an audience of 3–6 year olds. Following an format similar to that of The Hoobs, it is composed of original puppet segments featuring Muppets created specifically for the series, local mini-documentaries depicting a child’s eye view of life in Northern Ireland, and classic Muppet segments from the Sesame Street library.

The common area of the programme is the "Sesame Tree" – a hollow tree where children can ask questions and have them answered; the Sesame Tree is the programme's analogue to the street in the original Sesame Street programme. The residents of the Tree are Potto; Hilda and Archie, a new arrival for the second series.

All the characters were developed by Sesame Workshop and Sixteen South, and the Muppets for the series were built by The Jim Henson Company in New York, who worked with exclusively local writers and Muppet Performers. Martin P. Robinson assisted in auditioning and training local performers, who include Lesa Gillespie, Paul Currie, Michael McNulty, Mike Smith, Helen Sloan and Alana Kerr. The Northern Irish science fiction writer Ian McDonald has contributed scripts to the series, along with local writing trio Kieran Doherty, Danny Nash and Ian Nugent. Each of these four writers has written five episodes each, comprising the full 20 episodes of the first series.