Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared
Official poster
Genre	Comedy horror Musical Surrealism
Created by	Becky Sloan Joe Pelling Baker Terry (2022–present)
Written by	Becky Sloan Joe Pelling Hugo Donkin (2014) Baker Terry (2014–present) Sam Campbell (2022–present) Natasha Hodgson (2022–present)
Directed by	Becky Sloan Joe Pelling Baker Terry (2022–present)
Voices of	Becky Sloan Joe Pelling Baker Terry Kellen Goff Thomas Ridgewell Phil Wang Charlie Perkins Lolly Adefope Kevin Eldon James Stevenson Bretton Jamie Demetriou Nathan Foad Vivienne Soan
Composers	Charlie Pelling (2016–) Joe Pelling Baker Terry (2022–present)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	2
No. of episodes	6 (YouTube) 6 (Channel 4)
Production
Executive producers	Becky Sloan (2014–16) Joe Pelling (2014–16) James Stevenson Bretton (2014–) Thomas Ridgewell (2014–16)
Producers	Benjamin Lole (2014–16) Hugo Donkin (2014–present) Charlie Perkins (2022–present)
Cinematography	Max Halstead (2014–15) Edward Tucker (2014–) Spike Morris (2nd Unit, 2021–)
Editor	Nick Armstrong (2022–present)
Running time	3-8 minutes (YouTube) 23 minutes (Channel 4)
Production companies	THIS IS IT (2011–13) Blink Industries (2014–) Conaco (2018) Super Deluxe (2018) Channel 4 (2022–present)
Original release
Network	YouTube (2011–16) Channel 4 (2022–present)
Release	29 July 2011 (2011-07-29) – present

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (often abbreviated as DHMIS) is a British surrealist musical comedy horror web and television series created by Becky Sloan, Joe Pelling, and Baker Terry. The original web series consists of six episodes, released from 29 July 2011 to 19 June 2016 on YouTube; the television series premiered on 23 September 2022 on All 4 with simulcast on Channel 4 the next week. The series combines segments in live action, puppetry, traditional animation, flash animation, clay animation, and computer animation.

In the series, each episode starts like a typical children's series, consisting of anthropomorphic puppets akin to those featured in Sesame Street and other popular children's television programmes. The series parodies and satirises these TV programmes by contrasting its childlike, colourful environment and its inhabitants against disturbing themes; each episode features a surreal plot twist in the climax, including psychedelic content and imagery involving graphic violence, dark humour, existentialism, and psychological horror.

The six episodes of the web series explore and discuss basic subjects typically found in preschool, namely creativity, time, love, technology, diet, and dreams, while the television series touched on jobs, death, family, friendship, transport, and electricity. The series received widespread acclaim for its story, production design, psychological horror, humor, hidden themes, and characters, and is regarded by many as one of the greatest web series of all time. The television series was met with similar acclaim as well.

Premise

Each episode revolves around three characters: a yellow childlike humanoid with blue hair and overalls, an anthropomorphic green mallard duck with a tartan coat, and a red humanoid with a mop-like head. They have no names explicitly stated within the series, but are often referred to as Yellow Guy, Duck and Red Guy respectively. Yellow Guy's father, Roy, also occasionally appears. An episode typically goes with the three main characters meeting one or several anthropomorphic characters, who begin a musical number related to a basic concept of day-to-day life with an upbeat melody, similar to that of a Sesame Street segment. As each song progresses, it becomes apparent that its moral or message is nonsensical and self-contradicting, and that the "teacher" character has ulterior sinister motives. The climax of each episode typically involves a plot twist involving the addition of escalating psychological horror, which then culminates into gore and graphic violence. Later in the series, the characters begin questioning the nature of their reality and the bizarre messages of the teachers.

Production

Sloan and Pelling met while studying Fine Art and Animation respectively at Kingston University, where they started THIS IS IT Collective with some friends. They produced the first episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared in their free time with no budget. When they started on the project they imagined making it into a series, but initially dropped the idea after finishing the first episode. After the short film gained popularity, they decided to revisit that idea. Channel 4's Random Acts commissioned the second episode. The show soon attracted mainstream commissioners; however, Sloan and Pelling turned these offers down because they "wanted to keep it fairly odd" and "have the freedom to do exactly what we wanted".

In May 2014, Sloan and Pelling announced that they would start a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to make four or more additional episodes, one every three months, starting in September 2014. They uploaded low-quality camera footage of the characters being taken hostage and held for ransom. A 12-year-old American boy tried to use hacked credit card information to donate £35,000 to the campaign, but he was caught and those funds were thrown out. Their Kickstarter goal of £96,000 was reached on 19 June 2014, and in total £104,935 was raised. YouTuber TomSka became an executive producer on the series after donating £5,000 to the Kickstarter.

In January 2016, Sloan and Pelling collaborated with Lazy Oaf to release a line of clothing based on the characters and themes of the show.

Television series

On 19 June 2017, a year after the release of episode 6, Sloan hinted towards additional work into the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared series. A teaser trailer titled "Wakey Wakey..." was released on the channel on 13 September 2018, teasing a new television show made in a collaboration between Blink Industries, Conaco, and Super Deluxe. The 30-second video gained over two million views within 24 hours of its release and peaked at No. 1 on YouTube's Trending list. Details of the plot were released on 3 December 2018 in advance of a 2019 Sundance Film Festival screening of the pilot. The pilot episode ran at 23 minutes, and it appeared in the "Indie Episodic Program 1" alongside other short films.

On 7 July 2020, it was officially announced that the series had been picked up by Channel 4. The series wrapped up filming by September 2021, and it was expected to be originally released streaming exclusively on All 4 on 12 September 2022. However, the series was delayed slightly because of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. On 16 September 2022, it was announced that the series would be releasing on 23 September 2022 on All 4 and premiered 30 September 2022 on Channel 4.

Episodes

All episodes were written by Becky Sloan and Joe Pelling, with Baker Terry co-writing each episode starting with "Time". "Time" is also co-written by Hugo Donkin.

Web series (2011–16)

No. overall	No. in series	Title	Original release date
1	1	"Creativity"	29 July 2011 (2011-07-29)
Red Guy, Yellow Guy, and Duck sit around a table doing nothing before Sketchbook, a talking sketchbook, opens up and begins teaching them about creativity. She explains it in vague terms, destroying Yellow Guy's attempt to paint a picture of a clown and declaring green "not a creative colour", before encouraging the three to get creative. This results in Red Guy covering a human heart with glitter, Duck Guy painting the word "DEATH" on a piece of paper surrounded by skulls, and inexplicably larger versions of the main trio dancing wildly and sharing a cake made of raw meat, accompanied by the music becoming increasingly dissonant and tense. At the end, everything is restored to normal, and Sketchbook declares "Now let's all agree to never be creative again."
2	2	"Time"	8 January 2014 (2014-01-08)
While waiting for their show to start, the three friends are interrupted by a talking clock who begins singing about time. Like the sketchbook before him, he explains it in vague terms, confusing all three, before deciding to demonstrate "how time makes your appearance change", causing the three to rapidly age and decay. The camera pulls back to reveal the decaying characters are just on the television screen being watched by the standard three, before the clock declares "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be fine - but eventually, everyone runs out of time!"
3	3	"Love"	31 October 2014 (2014-10-31)
The gang is out on a chicken picnic, until Duck kills a butterfly, thinking it's a bee. Yellow Guy gets upset and runs away. He then finds another butterfly named Shrignold that explains how things could be better in its world of only love. Shrignold and his singing friends are gradually revealed to be part of a cult, worshipping a giant stone head named Malcolm, the "King of Love". Before the cult begins its brainwashing procedures on him, Yellow Guy wakes up in a tree, Duck and Red Guy having found him and brought him their last boiled egg. The egg hatches a bloody caterpillar similar to Shrignold which calls Yellow Guy "Father!" before Duck squashes it, again thinking it's a bee.
4	4	"Computers"	1 April 2015 (2015-04-01)
As the gang plays a board game, they start wondering if there's an easy way to learn about the world. Colin, their computer, then awakens and decides to introduce them to the Internet, asking them several invasive questions before Red Guy slaps his keyboard and makes him angry. Through several glitches, the three are copied into the computer as digital avatars. Colin informs them there are only three things to do online: looking at charts, "digital style", and "digital dancing". This leads to an endless loop where the song gets faster and faster and Yellow Guy and Duck vanish from the real world. Red Guy follows the computer cord into another room, finding a low-budget recreation of their kitchen and characters. Someone in a black morphsuit claps a clapper board shut and Red Guy's head bursts into glitter.
5	5	"Health"	14 October 2015 (2015-10-14)
Yellow Guy and Duck are planning to make a meal, but something seems off. Before they can figure out what it is, they get surrounded by various talking foods that try to explain how to be healthy, which includes eating healthy "plain" foods such as white sauce, cream, and aspic, but accompanied by warnings that several of these foods will make "your teeth go grey". Duck continually tries to leave, but the Healthy Band won't let him, causing him to break a camera and run off set. He then wakes up on an operating table in a dark room to find a massive can of food consuming his internal organs. At the end, Yellow Guy is revealed to be alone, having eaten several cans of Duck's remains. During the credits, Red Guy leaves a phone booth, having tried to call the other two on the phone the whole episode.
6	6	"Dreams"	19 June 2016 (2016-06-19)
Yellow Guy is all alone and scared. But when he tries to go to sleep, a lamp awakens and sings to him about how dreams work, resulting in him beginning to drown in oil. Red Guy awakens in a suit at an office job, surrounded by several other red beings who look like him, and tries to describe his own dream to his coworkers, who don't understand. He later visits a bar and gets up on stage for an open mic, singing the Creativity Song from episode one before seeing Yellow Guy's father Roy at the back of the room and being transported to a dark room. Red Guy finds a computer with Yellow Guy being tormented by the singing lamp and begins pressing different buttons, causing the lamp to transform into the clock, Colin the computer, Shrignold, the Lamb Chop and Spinach from the Healthy Band, and finally Duck for a moment, as well as several other "teacher" characters who haven't been seen before. As Yellow Guy begins to panic, Red Guy is interrupted by Roy, implied to have been the mastermind behind all the teachers up to this point, before he follows the computer's cord to a massive plug in the wall and unplugs it, saying, "I wonder what will happen." The three friends find themselves in their kitchen once again, having been changed to their favorite colors as mentioned in the first episode, before the date on the wall (having been June 19th the whole series) finally changes to June 20th and Sketchbook opens once again, beginning her song before being cut off by the end credits.

Pilot (2018)

A long form TV pilot was produced in 2018 with Super Deluxe, Conaco and Blink Industries. The pilot premiered at 2019 Sundance Film Festival, appearing in the "Indie Episodic Program 1" alongside other short films. The idea, which involved "current affairs", was later scrapped, and the trailer was removed from the YouTube channel. The setting, which Sloan attributed some roots to South Park, did not have "the timelessness and claustrophobia of the originals."

No. overall	No. in series	Title	Original release date
7	1	"Pilot"	Unaired
Roommates Red Guy, Yellow Guy, and Duck live simple and repetitive lives in the complacent colourful community of Clayhill. When the town’s mayor disappears, everything descends into chaos.

Television series (2022–)

All episodes for this series are co-written by Sam Campbell.

No. overall	No. in series	Title	Original release date
8	1	"Jobs"	30 September 2022 (2022-09-30)
Having nothing on their daily schedule, Duck and Yellow Guy try to find something to do, much to Red Guy's chagrin. A talking briefcase informs them about the concept of jobs, suggesting several that they could do before transporting them to a "bits and parts" factory where Red Guy stumbles into becoming upper management and Yellow Guy fits right in with his coworkers. Duck continually tries to leave, but is first fired by Red Guy and then brainwashed into loving his job by a monstrous dog called the Carehound. However, when he comes back to work, he finds that everyone is now 40 years older and having a retirement party for Yellow Guy. After Duck throws Yellow Guy's retirement card into a machine and inadvertently causes Yellow Guy's hand to be caught and crushed in the machine, the talking briefcase returns and finishes his song, transporting the three back to their house and restoring them to their old selves as they express confusion about everything that's happened. The briefcase rewards them for their work with a coin, which lands directly in Duck's eye.
9	2	"Death"	30 September 2022 (2022-09-30)
Duck reads in the newspaper that he's dead because he forgot to drink water, and when his heart falls out of his body, it summons a talking coffin who helps the friends organize a funeral for him. However, Duck annoys the coffin while he's buried underground, and Red Guy attempts to build a new friend to replace him, though Yellow Guy refuses to accept them. Red Guy slowly molds a talking blob of clay into an exact replica of Duck, but Yellow Guy returns to the burial site and digs up the old Duck to bring him back. The group briefly tries to start a new show with the two Ducks before one of them abruptly kills the other with a shovel, stating that there being four of them doesn't work.
10	3	"Family"	7 October 2022 (2022-10-07)
The three friends have trouble opening a "family pack" of snacks, prompting a pair of twins to arrive and start teaching them about the concept of families. They bring the friends to their house, introducing them to their grotesquely misshapen father, brother, and grandfather, but when they reject Duck from their family, he falls back into the friends' original house. Red Guy meets the twins' "family tree", who takes most of his blood to help him find his family, but when Red Guy actually meets his family, they reject him for being too expressive. Yellow Guy is kidnapped and dressed as the twins' mother, who reveal they only wanted to complete their family to get a family discount on a food delivery. However, Yellow Guy's father Roy arrives, devouring the entire family while allowing Yellow Guy to escape. The three friends decide that you don't need to be blood relatives to be a family before realizing there are only two snacks in the family pack.
11	4	"Friendship"	7 October 2022 (2022-10-07)
The three friends attempt to go online for their annual "computer day", but Yellow Guy can't remember the password, prompting his friends to insult him. A worm named Warren (who repeatedly says he's an eagle) arrives to scold them and teach them about what true friendship is. After finally remembering the password, Yellow Guy retreats into his own mind to hang out with his "brain friends", but Warren enters his mind and bores Yellow Guy's imaginary friends into either leaving or killing themselves. In the real world, Yellow Guy is slowly melting as Red Guy and Duck find information online about what's afflicting their friend; when they realize that the problem could be caused by "a worm in his brain", Duck shoves a needle into Yellow Guy's ear, killing a grotesquely misshapen Warren. The three friends make up before Yellow Guy breaks something, prompting a fight between them all that lasts throughout the episode credits.
12	5	"Transport"	14 October 2022 (2022-10-14)
Red Guy is bored by Duck and Yellow Guy taking inventory of everything in the house and wants to go on a trip. An elderly train - Old Train - arrives to teach the three about transport in an animated sequence, transforming into various vehicles, but dies while in the form of a car. Red Guy, desperate to leave, manages to get the car started, resuscitating Old Train and crashing through the wall of their house. Yellow Guy, Duck, and even the car's satnav keep trying to direct Red Guy back home, but he only presses onward down the road, eventually causing the cheery and colorful world around them to glitch into a desolate wasteland. The three friends sit around a fire in the wasteland before Yellow Guy appears to hear a woman's voice claiming "...the journey always ends up back at home" and the episode abruptly cuts to a live-action person's hand gently pushing a model of the car back to a model of the friends' house.
13	6	"Electricity"	14 October 2022 (2022-10-14)
Red Guy and Duck attempt to shred an electricity bill, claiming "Electricity is silly stuff!" before a robot called Electracey climbs out of their electrical box to teach them about electricity. Yellow Guy reveals that, like her, he is powered by batteries, and Duck swaps Yellow Guy's old faulty batteries for Electracey's fresh ones, making her dim-witted and him both smart and self-aware - for example, a talking safe arrives to teach them about insurance, but Yellow Guy interrupts and corrects his inaccurate information. Yellow Guy leaves to go upstairs and investigate what's causing the teachers to appear, first finding increasingly larger versions of Red Guy and Duck alongside several teachers, before finding an old live-action woman named Lesley surrounded by props from previous episodes and a diorama of the house. She gives Yellow Guy a book that supposedly contains all the answers he's been looking for. Meanwhile, Red Guy and Duck use too much electricity and cause a blackout, getting lost and finding dead versions of all of their previous teachers, before Yellow Guy returns with the book. Before he can show them anything, Duck swaps his batteries back with Electracey, restoring the power to the house but causing Yellow Guy to lose his newfound intelligence and forget all that he found upstairs. He puts the book through Duck's shredder as Duck and Red Guy cheer him on, none the wiser.

Themes

In a faux interview, Becky and Joe jokingly described the plot as "three best friends who go on a journey to find a magic pirate ship and save the day".

A student writer for Nouse compared the appeal of the first episode to themes in Gothic literature, arguing that they are both "tapping into the same cultural fear of a violent subconscious hiding beneath the façade of normality". In The Wesleyan Argus, another student writer called the series a "fine example of the era of esotericism" and noted that, "There is a building meta-commentary on the relationships between viewer, perception, creator, participant, and art (and perhaps death) that began with the first episode, but what that commentary is trying to say is not yet entirely clear. However, there is an absolute sense that the series is building toward a culmination."

A common interpretation is that it's a critique of social institutions and children's edutainment.

Cast

YouTube series cast

• Baker Terry as Yellow Guy, Duck, Tony the Talking Clock, Shrignold, Steak and Lamp
• Becky Sloan as Sketchbook and Spinach Can
• Joseph Pelling as Red Guy and Colin the Computer

Cameos

• TomSka as Magnet
• Kellen Goff as Shovel

Channel 4 Series pilot cast

• Baker Terry as Yellow Guy, Duck, Key, Mayor Pigface, Security Thing, Policeman, Big Ian, and Milk Jar
• Joseph Pelling as Red Guy
• Becky Sloan as Mrs. Grenald, Tree, and Ladder

Channel 4 series cast

• Baker Terry as Yellow Guy, Duck, Briefcase, Andy, Duncan, Trash Can, Lucky Mo, Family Tree, Roy Gribbleston, Warren The Eagle, Yumpherdinker, Dr. Bushman, Choo Choo Train, Tony the Talking Clock, Steak, Big Duck and Bigger Duck
• Joseph Pelling as Red Guy, Colin the Computer, Brain Friends Theme Singer, Brain Friends Announcer, Big Red Guy and Bigger Red Guy
• Becky Sloan as Unemployed Brendon, Stain Edwards, Grolton's Chicken Family Tub Discount Commericial Announcer, Brain Friends Theme Singer, First Tooth, The Lump and Electracey
• Vivienne Soan as Lesley
• Leila Navabi as Claire
• Amy Gledhill as Wet Floor Sign
• Kath Hughes as Printer
• Phil Wang as Vending Machine
• Jen Ives as Free Vending Machine
• Chris Cantrill as Safety Video Announcer
• Lolly Adefope as Elevator and Mrs. Grelch
• Charlie Perkins as Jenny
• Kevin Eldon as Coffin
• George Fouracres as Lamp, Grolton and Hovris
• Sam Campbell as ID Card and Apple
• Katy Wix as Tissue Box
• Freya Parker as Grandma and Bread
• James Stevenson Bretton as Lily and Todney
• Liam Williams as Market Man
• Emma Sidi as Bubble Bath Memory
• Kiell Smith-Bynoe as Saturdavid
• Johnny White Really-Really as Shy Imaginary Older Brother
• Charlie Pelling as Brain Friends Theme Singer
• Chris Hayward as Instructional Tape Announcer
• Katie Kvinge as GPS
• Jimmy Slim as Time Child
• Jamie Demetriou as Safe
• Michael Stranney as Mirror
• Beattie Hartley as Experimented Creature
• Jason Forbes as Boundary Hand
• Natasha Hodgson as Rock
• Nathan Foad as Toilet

Reception

The series as a whole has received widespread critical acclaim. Scott Beggs listed the original short film as number 8 on his list of the 11 best short films of 2011. Carolina Mardones listed the first episode as number 7 in her top ten short films of 2011. It was also included as part of a cinema event in Banksy's Dismaland. In April 2016, the main characters of the series were featured on the cover of the magazine Printed Pages, along with an "interview" of the three main characters written by the magazine's editor. All six episodes of DHMIS were included in the September 2016 festival XOXO.

Drew Grant of the Observer described the series as "mind-melting". Freelance writer Benjamin Hiorns observed that "it's not the subject matter that makes these films so strangely alluring, it's the strikingly imaginative set and character design and the underlying Britishness of it all". Joe Blevins of The A.V. Club praised the show's "sense-to-nonsense ratio" and its production values. Samantha Joy of TenEighty praised the sixth episode of the series, writing that it "creates a provocative end to a pretty dark narrative about content creation".

Creators

Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling are British graphic designers, artists and animators. Their advertising runs through commercial productions. The duo have worked as part of the THIS IS IT Collective.

Their content consists of videos, graphic design art, animation, music, and working with real-life materials to resemble things in the real world as art. They have won multiple awards, including the 2012 SXSW Midnight Shorts Award, and the 2016 ADC Young Guns award.

They have also co-written and did puppeteer work for Cartoon Network's The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Puppets" (season five, episode 36). Sloan and Baker Terry provided voices of Grady, Frank, and Howdy (the three puppets featured in the episode, who trap the main characters Gumball and Darwin in their world). This episode features a song where the puppets sing about never-ending fun to Darwin with toned-down disturbing content similar to the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared series in theme. A series of shorts based on the episode followed, titled Waiting for Gumball, made by the same team as the original TV episode.

See also

• Wonder Showzen
• Mr. Meaty
• Salad Fingers

External links

• Official YouTube channel
• Becky and Joe's website