The second series based on Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Unlike Daniel Tiger, which is set in the Neighborhood of Make Believe, Donkey Hodie is set in Someplace Else. Yes, it's actually called that, because King Friday made the original Donkey Hodie build his windmill "someplace else". The original Donkey Hodie is now a loving grandfather known as Grampy Hodie, and the new Donkey Hodie is a bright yellow donkey girl with a striking magenta mane.
The series is aimed at an older audience than Daniel Tiger, featuring more character-driven stories, more conflict, and less hamfisted messages, as well as more comedy and pop culture references. Donkey Hodie is actually a reference to Don Quixote, who also knew a thing or two about windmills. Spiffy Pictures is renowned for their clever comedy on Nature Cat, which also works to Donkey Hodie's advantage to distinguish it from DTN. The show does use music to convey its messages, in typical Mister Rogers fashion, but with bigger words like "frustrated" and "compromise", a mix of old and new songs, and a 60s pop feel.
As I said, this show is a bit of an acquired taste. This means that not everyone will immediately like it at first, but as you watch more and more episodes, you might just like it. The show is definitely not for everyone, and as long as you have good criticisms of the show and not bad ones like "wah, muh nostalgia" or "wah, this show is a ripoff and the characters are brats" (which is not true, looking at you Paw Print on Google....)
The puppets and set design are by far my favorite aspect of the show. The set design is extremely stylized and absolutely gorgeous, you can tell that they put a lot of love into it. The crew also did a great job modernizing the puppets and making them look cuddly. One such example is Purple Panda. On Mister Rogers, Purple Panda could be very unsettling and many people recalling being afraid of him as children (I was a little scared of him too), but Purple Panda here is smaller and more friendly looking, plus he doesn't ping anywhere. So the show's huggable, fuzzy appearance works to its advantage.
If there's one thing PBS is good at, it's making flawed, rounded-out characters that aren't just the "always cheerful and friendly kid that everyone loves" archetype. In fact, Donkey could be considered somewhat of a deconstruction of this trope. Because everyone loves her, they expect her to always have the solution to problems and task her with stuff like walking a pet elephant. But Donkey is well-written enough that she's flawed, she experiences ups and downs, and she does get frustrated, and gets calmed down by Clyde the Cloud.
If you read all these paragraphs, I thank you for reading all of them. I think Donkey Hodie will be a hit show and is already one of my top modern PBS shows.
