The Friendly Giant

It featured three main characters: a giant named Friendly (played by Bob Homme), who lived in a huge castle, along with his puppet animal friends Rusty (a rooster who played a harp, guitar, and accordion and lived in a book bag hung by the castle window), and Jerome (a giraffe who was tawny with purple spots and poked his head in the window).

Kinescopes of these shows were distributed to a few other non-commercial stations, and some of them made it to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto, Ontario.

In the United States, National Educational Television carried both WHA and CBC versions from 1953 until 1970, when NET ceded the network to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Each episode would begin with the camera panning to the right over a detailed model of part of a village, farm, harbor, city, etc as Friendly could be heard narrating and observing the goings-on in the land below.

The pan would continue until it stops at the Giant's great big boot on the left coming into view at the edge of the valley and Friendly would ask the viewers to "Look up  ... waaaaay up!"

and the Giant would thus invite everyone to come visit his castle, telling them that he will meet them there after letting the drawbridge down and opening the front doors.

The rest of the show focused on gentle, humorous chat between Friendly, Rusty, and Jerome, followed by a story or a musical performance.

His hand gestures farewell as the camera zooms out or fades and the castle's medieval doors are closed and the drawbridge is raised.

[citation needed] The shows were largely ad libbed, typically based around a one-page plot summary for each episode.

However, The Friendly Giant paraphernalia was removed from the CBC Museum after the puppets Rusty and Jerome appeared, without permission from the Homme family, in a sketch during the 2007 Gemini Awards.

The train set of the railway yard used in the show's intro is on display at the Pump House Steam Museum in Kingston, Ontario.