Directed by John Walsh Original language(s) English Running time 5 x 30 min. Initial release 16 March 2009 First episode date 16 March 2009 Producer John Walsh Production company John Walsh | Country of origin United Kingdom Executive producer(s) Roger James Distributor BBC Director John Walsh Narrated by John Walsh Language English | |
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Sofa Surfers is a British documentary series for the BBC by John Walsh of Walsh Bros Ltd. There are over 130,000 children living in the UK today without a permanent place they can call home. Sofa Surfers is a revealing BBC documentary series which takes a look into the lives of four homeless children living in different types of temporary accommodation. This is thought to be the first children’s documentary dedicated to this subject. Using innovative animation and rotoscoping techniques, the series has been a watershed moment in children’s documentaries in the UK.
Contents
The challenge of this commission was to show the real lives of homelessness children through a stripped week of observational documentaries that would engage an audience of their peers of 6–12 years old. This was achieved by ensuring that the young and vulnerable contributors were empowered to speak candidly for themselves about their situation and employed some of the latest animation techniques to bring those stories alive for the viewers. Each episode featured powerful and insightful testimony from children, as young as six, and showed their resilience, black humour and mature understanding of the incredibly difficult circumstances they were in. John Walsh spoke on BBC News about challenges making the series.
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Awards
In 2010 Rose d'Or nominated Walsh's five part BBC series on childhood homeless Sofa Surfers was nominated for the Social Award at the Rose d'Or Awards.
Reception
This series received wide recognition for challenging perceptions around child hood homelessness, which had mostly gone unreported up until this point outside of news reports. The Guardian made comparisons with the Ken Loach 1966 film Cathy Come Home The Daily Mirror described it as "Shocking story of homeless family" The Sun agreed that the "ground breaking series" threw new light of this age old subject