Great Performances

A look at animals in their natural habitats also explores key scientific concepts that the animals' actions and behaviors exemplify.

Glasgow, 1937. James Herriot is a trained vet but can't get a job. He is at wits end when he gets invited to interview for an assistant vet position in rural Yorkshire. His potential employer, the local vet Siegfried Farnon, is quite demanding and his assistants don't tend to last long. Was the long trip all for nothing?

Seven-year-old Lyla and her close-knit family address everyday problems together in the big city.

Hyacinth Bucket (whose name she insists is pronounced "bouquet") continually looks for opportunities to climb the social ladder, though she's wedged on a rung just below her sister Violet (whose house has a swimming pool, sauna, and room for a pony) and just above her working class sisters Daisy and Rose. Hyacinth's passion for flawless entertaining unnerves her neighbor Elizabeth, who is often invited to the Bucket home for coffee. Elizabeth's divorced brother Emmet, who also lives next door to the Buckets, tries to avoid Hyacinth because she breaks into song in his presence in the hope he'll cast her in one of his "little theater" musical productions.

Full of boundless energy, Malik, Zadie, and Zeke run, bounce, roll, and romp, always on the lookout for interesting Treeborhood problems to solve. Malik is thoughtful, considerate, and sometimes set in his ways (which can be a good thing when you're problem-solving). His speedy, adventurous younger sister, Zadie, is a brainstormer extraordinaire, with ideas that range from silly to very smart. Zeke is the youngest-a funny, curious cuddle-bug who loves to play and explore. Super, their grandmother, is the Superintendent and unofficial "Mayor" of the Treeborhood-the de facto heart and soul of the place. In each story, the Wombats demonstrate computational thinking for preschoolers, learning as they go. Their aspirations will sometimes exceed their proficiency. But, eventually they'll stop, take a breath, put their heads together and figure out a fix-using the design process, sequencing, debugging, and other key elements of computational thinking. From a crazy campout being unfun, to a job with the smallest tasks ever to be done, to a problem with a broken down fireworks-making machine, there are so many problem the Wombats can solve.

CYBERCHASE takes kids on a wild ride through cyberspace where they are challenged to use the power of math in a classic good-vs-evil battle. When dastardly villain Hacker (played deliciously by Christopher Lloyd) launches a mad mission to conquer the virtual universe, Motherboard calls upon three Earth kids for help. They are Jackie, Matt and Inez--the heroes of CYBERCHASE--who travel from their real-world realm with wisecracking cyber-bird Digit (comic actor Gilbert Gottfried) to the colorful virtual vistas of cyberspace, where they vanquish the bad guys in an all-out battle of wits. Each episode takes the kids on a thrilling adventure driven by a different math concept--from tackling time in ancient Egyptian tombs, to cracking codes in creepy caves, or making sense of numbers in a fractured fairy tale world. In their quest, the heroes use minds, not muscles, to overcome obstacles and danger everywhere. Every episode of CYBERCHASE concludes with a "For Real" live action segment in which a young comic actor encounters a situation which reinforces the math concept explored in the animated storyline.