Bluey Creator Apparently Wrote A “Pretty Dark” Episode Of Peppa Pig About Parenting

If you are one of millions of parents who like to watch Bluey as much, if not slightly more, than your kids, that is no accident. Creator Joe Brumm’s whole thought process behind Bluey was to give parents something fun to watch with their kids. And sometimes without them. In fact, Brumm once wrote a “pretty dark” R-rated episode of Peppa Pig all about the realities of parenthood before Bluey was the wildly popular show it is today, and he would still “love to make it one day” if he gets the chance.

Brumm spoke to The Hollywood Reporter recently about his early days coming up with the concept of Bluey, which he wrote completely on his own at first to avoid some traditional “pitfalls,” he told the outlet. “Well, the first one is this sort of thing that always gets said, which is, ‘Kids’ shows need to be about kids having agency and power because they don’t have any in real life.’ But it’s like, have you met my kids? That’s all they’ve got is agency and power,” the dad of two told THR.

After the pilot for Bluey, a show about a family of Australian blue heelers if you haven’t heard of it, struggled to gain any traction, Brumm considered making the series for adults and got in some practice by writing an episode of Peppa Pig, the British series with a similar, warm energy to Bluey.

“I always thought it would be kind of funny to do an R-rated Peppa Pig,” Brumm told THR. “Using Peppa Pig’s grammar but telling the story about parenthood as it really is, you know, mastitis and all that. And I wrote that script out, and it was 22 minutes, and I reread it recently, and I really like it. I’d love to make it one day.”

He noted that Bluey touched on some of those elements in the episode “Baby Race,” when Bingo talks about the competitive nature of parenting, but kept it more kid-friendly. Not so with the Peppa Pig episode.

“It was pretty dark, man,” Brumm told THR. “But on the eve of going any further with it, there was a show out here [in Australia] called The Letdown, which was live-action but hit the same territory, and I just thought, ‘Oh, that’s doing that really well,’ and I pivoted back to preschool.”

Raise your hand if you hope a super-realistic episode about parenting shows up just for adults on Peppa Pig or Bluey soon. The time has come.