| Alt Name: | Barbapapa en famille ! (French) |
| Developer: | Annette Tison Talus Tayor |
| Narrated: | Bernard Alane (some episodes) |
| Open Theme: | "La famille du Barbapapa" |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Num Seasons: | 2 |
| Num Episodes: | 86[1] |
| Executive Producer: | Alice Taylor Thomas Taylor |
| Animator: | Normaal Animation |
| Editor: | Tim Taylor |
| Runtime: | 11 minutes |
| Company: | Normaal Animation |
| Network: | TF1 (France)[2] Nick Jr. (EMEA) Télé-Québec (Canada) RTS 1 (Switzerland) |
| Last Aired: | present |
| Related: | Barbapapa |
Barbapapa: One Big Happy Family! (French: '''Barbapapa en famille !''', lit. "Barbapapa with family!") is a French musical animated children's television series. The series serves as a reboot of the original Barbapapa television series based on the books of the same name by French-American couple Annette Tison and Talus Taylor. The series is a production of Normaal Animation,[1] with the participation of TF1, Nickelodeon, Télé-Québec and RTS.
The show was first announced in 2018 via a Nickelodeon press release,[3] and began broadcasting in its native France beginning November 10, 2019 on TF1, as part of the TFOU programming block for children.[4] [5] On June 9, 2021, a compilation film consisting of previous episodes called Les Barbapapa se mettent au vert ("The Barbapapas Go Green") was released in French theaters.[6] [7] The second season premiered on November 5, 2023.
It deviates from the original series and its sequel, Barbapapa Around the Worlds five-minute episode format by extending the length of each episode to eleven minutes, which allows for more involved episode plots with more storytelling.
Barbapapa: One Big Happy Family! focuses on the daily lives of the members of the Barbapapa family (Barbapapa, Barbamama, and their seven children; Barbabravo, Barbabright, Barbabeau, Barbabelle, Barbalala, Barbalib, and Barbazoo), a group of shapeshifting blobs. Most of the episodes involve the family getting themselves into extraordinary and often humorous situations, such as building a rocket to Mars or the children trying to hide a pet elephant they found in the wild from their parents.
Each episode features a teachable moral that the characters learn from while on their adventures.
Unlike the original French version, which uses adult voice actresses as the voices of all the Barbababies, child actors perform the voices of all the Barbababies. The dub was produced in the United Kingdom by Jungle Studios in British English.
The voice actor for Barbabravo was omitted in error from the credits in the original release of the English dub. The voice actor for the narrator (whose voice is also changed in season 2) is uncredited.
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Barbapapa franchise as a whole, the series was released worldwide on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. channels in over 100 territories throughout late 2020 and early 2021.[8] This allowed for the series to be dubbed into a wide variety of languages, including some which the original Barbapapa series and Around the World have never been dubbed into before. The first countries to premiere the series outside of France were Italy,[9] Germany and Austria.[10]
Despite the English dub being produced in the United Kingdom, the series did not air on British television until July 10, 2021.[11] The English dub also airs in Australia and New Zealand, as well as via secondary audio tracks in Italy, Germany, Austria and on Nick Jr.'s Global feed.
Yle TV2 in Finland premiered the series on January 1, 2021[12] as part of the Pikku Kakkonen programming block for children, making it the first non-Nickelodeon channel outside of the French-speaking world to air the series.