Spirit Warriors

Spirit Warriors
Genre	Fantasy Drama
Created by	Jo Ho
Starring	Jessica Henwick Benedict Wong Burt Kwouk Tom Wu Lil Simz Alicia Lai Gilles Geary Karl Rogers Daphne Cheung
Composer(s)	Matt Dunkley
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	10
Production
Running time	30 min.
Release
Original network	CBBC
Original release	Jan–Mar 2010
External links
Website

Spirit Warriors is a BBC children's adventure series, broadcast on BBC Two, BBC HD and CBBC. It is the first British television drama series to have a predominantly East Asian cast.

Very loosely inspired by ancient Chinese myths and legends, the show follows Bo, her sister Jen, and fellow schoolchildren Vicky, Trix and Martin who, during a trip to a museum, are transported to a parallel spirit world. Once there, they find themselves transformed into Spirit Warriors, each with his or her own special spirit power. With the help of their mentor Shen, a dragon, they have to use their new-found skills to navigate the realms of Wood, Water, Earth and Fire and find twelve legendary spirit pieces before the evil warlord Li and his henchman Hwang can get their hands on them.

The series was created and written by Jo Ho and produced by Nick Pitt. The working title was Bo and the Spirit World. Jon East, who had previously won a BAFTA for the children's docu-drama That Summer Day, was the executive producer, and directed half of the episodes including the start and end of the series. Episodes 4 to 8 were directed by the Australian director Mat King.

The show has been picked up internationally by Norway, South Korea, New Zealand and Singapore.

The BBC initially sought two young British Chinese or other East Asian actors to play Bo and her brother Timothy, characters aged 13 and 11. The roles were later changed to sisters, and it was announced in June 2009 that 16-year-old Jessica Henwick had been cast as Bo. Within the next month, announcements were made about the rest of the cast, including Alicia Lai in the role of the younger sister.

The first episode premiered on the CBBC channel on Friday 22 January at 5:45pm, titled "A Warrior is Born".

Following the transmission of the final episode, a backstage documentary exclusive called Spirit Warriors: Backstage aired on 26 March, which included cast interviews and footage from behind the scenes.

The series was filmed over three months at Three Mills Studios from April 2009. The designer, Catrin Meredydd, procured various set elements from recently completed feature films.

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Wikipedia