From this commission Thames Television came up with Rainbow, Yorkshire with Mister Trimble, Granada with Hickory House, while ATV's contribution would be Inigo Pipkin.
When the show started, the main character was an elderly puppet maker called Inigo Pipkin (hence the original title), played by George Woodbridge.
The scripts for the episodes that would be broadcast first in the transmission run, i.e. those that Woodbridge had not managed to record, were thus hastily rewritten, with Inigo's absence explained by his being away on a fishing holiday.
The puppets, alongside their young viewers, were guided through the experience of loss and grief, learning that, although Mr Pipkin was no longer with them, his love and teachings would endure.
The decision to embrace such a difficult subject within the format of a children's programme was a radical choice, particularly at a time when death was largely considered a taboo topic for young audiences.
The new set was built up from ground level to enable puppeteers to work standing up and to move around more freely, modelled on the methods used by The Muppet Show which was also filmed at ATV Elstree Studios.
Nigel Plaskitt — who provided the show's narration, as well as voicing and operating Hartley and Tortoise – made off-air domestic videocassette recordings of around 56 episodes, now the only format in which these are known to exist, and some have been used for the DVD release in the UK.