TV Talk: Fred Rogers Productions’ ‘Odd Squad’ relocates to UK

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

Pittsburgh-based Fred Rogers Productions’ “Odd Squad” celebrates its 10th anniversary this month with the release of its fourth season, its first to film outside North America as a co-production between Toronto-based Sinking Ship Entertainment and BBC Studios Kids & Family. (Previous “Odd Squad” seasons filmed in Toronto.)

While the setting and characters are new, the tone and content remain distinctly “Odd Squad,” a rare PBS Kids educational, live-action adventure-comedy.

The series, which previously established that there are Odd Squad precincts all over the world, follows kid agents who demonstrate math, problem-solving and collaboration skills aimed to appeal to viewers ages 4-8.

This season the Niagara Falls Odd Squad precinct’s Agent Orli (Asha Soetan) gets recruited to a British Odd Squad precinct where she’s paired with Agent Ozzie (Alexander Shaw).

“Odd Squad” creators Timothy McKeon and Adam Peltzman return as executive producers and season three showrunner Mark DeAngelis wrote the fourth season premiere and season finale. The new season, premiering at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday on WQED-TV, had a British showrunner and new British writers.

“Tim and I and Mark, we kicked around the initial concept of who these characters were, and then we all went out to London and met with a team of writers, downloaded them on how ‘Odd Squad’ worked and the world of it and started kicking around stories with them,” Peltzman said in a Zoom interview last month. “It’s a very specific show because of the type of storytelling and the math. To just say, ‘Hey, have fun,’ that would have been almost impossible. It was a lot of interplay with them about what makes an ‘Odd Squad’ story, how do you integrate the curriculum.”

Earlier seasons of the show aired in England and proved popular there, too, hence the BBC’s interest in co-producing a new, UK-set season.

Early on, producers decided to maintain one North American character so as not to leave the PBS audience behind.

“It also felt like such a great opportunity,” McKeon said. “Now you can talk about the two different cultures and how they interact. If you don’t have that character, then you lose that opportunity.”

The new season filmed last summer in Manchester, England, and it’s the first season to feature an Odd Squad agent with cerebral palsy.

“We always talk about the best version of ‘Odd Squad’ is that all kids can see themselves on screen with it,” McKeon said, recalling an early meeting with Fred Rogers Productions representatives where someone said of Odd Squad, “It’s a place where everyone’s equal and everyone belongs.”

“That’s the lens that we look through every season,” McKeon continued. “Let’s do that with casting. Let’s do that with the way the kids work together and treat each other. We can always do better but it’s something that fires all of us up.”

McKeon said when they created the series, it was important to not have a single character’s name in the title to offer flexibility as its pint-sized stars grew into adults.

First-season “Odd Squad” cast member Filip Geljo, who played Agent Otto, later landed a role in “Avatar: The Way of the Water” and its upcoming sequels. Dalila Belo, who played Agent Olive, later starred in Netflix’s “Anne with an E.” Second-season star Anna Cathcart, who played Agent Olympia, now headlines Netflix’s “XO, Kitty.” Actress Millie Davis, who played The Big O across multiple seasons, starred in the recent final season of Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy.”

When McKeon and Peltzman ran into Cathcart at an Emmys event years after she was on “Odd Squad,” they took a selfie together. Cathcart asked them to text her the photo. “I was like, ‘I only have your mom’s number,’ ” McKeon recalled, chuckling. “That’s the relationship we have (with the show’s stars).”

Still, Peltzman said he pays attention to how the show’s viewers react to cast turnover.

“I have a 7-year-old daughter who’s just recently become a super-fan of the show and I’ve seen her transition from season to season, and I get a little nervous,” Peltzman said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, is she gonna give up the show now that Olive and Otto are off?’ but then she loved the new agents. (Kids) love the characters, but they’re not overly attached to them and they’re interested to see how the world expands. This (new season) feels like a fun continuation of that.”

There’s also a consistency across the seasons that’s comforting. In early seasons, the Odd Squad science lab characters, Agent Oscar (Sean Michael Kyer) and later Agent Oona (Olivia Presti), wore green bowties. In this new season, a new science lab character also wears a green bowtie. A brief segment near the end of the first episode includes an image of Agent Oona.

McKeon and Peltzman said the way they balance familiar character traits when creating new characters comes down to the actors they cast.

“It’s not about us,” McKeon said. “We always have an idea of who the character is, and we definitely write it out, and we write casting sides, and we make sure that the characters are different from each other, but the key is to audition a ton of kids and write to the kid that comes in the door. Not only does it make it more specific and more surprising, it just makes it more authentic. It is such a joy when that kid walks in the room and your job is: I have to write to this kid’s talent.”

Peltzman said the team geeked out about young actor Alexander Joseph, who plays Agent Orwell this season.

“He has this droll sensibility,” McKeon said. “We ended up writing him into more episodes because, like, this kid is gold.”

“You start seeing what they bring to it,” Peltzman added, “and the writers start jotting things down and writing to that. It’s a really cool process.”

Although there are no firm plans to continue “Odd Squad,” McKeon and Peltzman want to make more, whether in England or elsewhere.

“This co-production was really joyful and there (are) Odd Squad (offices) all over the world,” McKeon said. “It feels like we could do more with other countries. It’s an exciting place to be: How can we see more kids see themselves on screen and teach them math?”

The 12-episode new season of “Odd Squad” will premiere on WQED at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday through Friday, Oct. 7-8, Oct. 14-15 and Oct. 21-24. Episodes will also air on WQED’s 24/7 PBS Kids digital subchannel (Channel 13.5) and stream on PBS digital platforms.