Nina and the Neurons: Earth Explorers

Earth Explorers, the eighth series of CBeebies flagship science show Nina and the Neurons began this week. I’m the screenwriter on four episodes of this series, my first episode will be broadcast tomorrow.

My Episodes

• Living in Space: Thursday 26th Sep, (4.30pm CBeebies)
• Night and Day: Tuesday 8th Oct, Tuesday 5th Nov (4.30pm CBeebies)
• Living on Earth: Thursday 10th Oct, Thursday 7th Nov (4.30pm CBeebies)
• Shooting Stars: Friday 22nd Nov, Friday 6th Dec (4.30pm CBeebies)

You can watch live on CBeebies at 4.30pm or catch up later on BBC Iplayer. 

The Show

Nina is a scientist who answers questions from children with the help of her neurons. It’s a live action show (the children and people are real) with animation (that’s Nina’s animated senses neurons).

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Small Beginnings

One reason I’m ridiculously excited about this series is because it all about earth science – geology, geography, oceanography, geophysics and space. I studied geophysics at university. Geophysics is the physics of the earth. Or physics for people who like the outdoors. But that definition may not sit right with the rock climbing theoretical physicists. Or the couch potato geophysicists.

Anyway, it’s funny to think it started for me when I was the age of the children who will be tuning into Nina tomorrow. My journey began with museum visits, a dinosaur collection and a little telescope. Now I’m writing on Nina. It’s exciting to think we might inspire a generation of children to explore the wonderful world around us and discover the science behind it through Earth Explorers. That’s geophysi-cool. I know, I’m a geophysi-geek. I’m not ashamed.

Another reason I’m excited about this series is because I was part of the team that came up with the concept for it back in 2012. It’s really exciting to see it become a series and I’m looking forward to watching it.

I worked on the last series of Nina and the Neurons too – Nina and the Neurons: Go Engineering. More here.