ABC Australia wants you to make new friends. “Want to make new friends? Come on.” That line from the first trailer for Tales From Outer Suburbia already tells you the suburbs aren’t going to be boring. The series lands on ABC iview on New Year’s Day 2026 at 6am, which… feels early, but kids don’t care about sleep schedules… even if it’s the day after partying like it’s 1999.
Based on Shaun Tan’s bestselling book, this 10-episode adaptation follows “almost thirteen-year-old” Klara and her six-year-old brother Pim as they move with their newly single mum Lucy (voiced by Geraldine Hakewill) to a place that’s anything but average. Their summer break spirals into odd encounters that push the family to actually talk to each other. In 2025? That’s wild.
Tan calls fiction and real life dangerously close. “There’s really no such thing as ‘normal life.’” He explains the goal is to “awaken that fantastic realisation that fiction & reality are never very far from one another.” So expect golden fish falling from the sky and creatures who might borrow your Wi-Fi.
Director Noel Cleary (Maya the Bee: The Honey Games, Tashi) teams up with a powerhouse Australian production crew: Highly Spirited, Flying Bark, and WA’s Siamese. It may look like stop-motion, but it’s CGI with a handcrafted vibe built in Perth and New South Wales. Shaun Tan oversaw the whole thing as creative director. He joked that animation feels like “building a bridge to a shoreline you can’t see. In a fog. With investors. And a schedule!”
Newcomers Brooklyn Davies and Felix Oliver Vergés lead the voice cast, joined by Dawn French, Michael Theo, Shabana Azeez, Andrea Solonge, and Tony Nikolakopoulos. If your kids love Bluey, this has that same Aussie charm but weirder. In a good way of course.
Tan wants audiences to think. “I hope audiences will be puzzled… not entirely understanding what, how or why things are happening.” Kids are smart. They can handle a little mystery in their suburban backyards. Just look at Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Stream it with your family. Ask your kids what they think is real or not. You might learn something from the tiny humans who see the world more honestly than the rest of us.
Don’t stay up too late. Again, Tales From Outer Suburbia arrives New Year’s Day 2026 at 6am. Watch the trailer below.
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