Little Red Tractor is an animated children's television series produced by the Little Entertainment Grouphttp://www.thelittleentertainmentgroup.co.uk/about.html. In the UK it is broadcast by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, usually on the CBeebies

CBeebies

CBeebies is the brand used by the BBC for programming aimed at children 6 years and under. It is used as a themed strand in the UK on terrestrial television, as a separate free-to-air domestic British channel and used for international varients supported by advertising, subscription or both...

 channel.

The main characters series are:

• Little Red Tractor - a small, old but reliable farm tractor, mute but capable of expressing emotions. Stan restored him to his as new condition.

• Stan - Little Red Tractor's driver and constant companion. Stan lives at Gosling Farm, and keeps 2 cows Daisy and Veronica, and 2 pigs.

• Patch - Stan's Dog

• Big Blue - a large, up-to-date farm tractor. Has no anthropomorphic traits.

• Harvey - Harvester owned by Mr Jones but sometimes borrowed by Stan.

• Mr Jones - Stan's neighbor and owner of Big Blue. He often appears selfish, materialistic or otherwise antisocial, but tends to be socially inept or smug rather than actually unpleasant. His full name is Mr Jasper Jones and he lives at Beech Farm.

• Thomas - Mr Jones nephew who comes to stay at Beech farm with him on occasion since Mr Jones sister moved back from the city to the country. Thomas is learning to like the country life which he initially thought was smelly, dirty and not as good as computer games.

• Stumpy - the miller. Friendly and mildly eccentric. Drives his quadbike, "Nipper" very badly. Stumpy plays in Walters band.

• Elsie - Stumpy's wife.

• Nipper - Quadbike ridden by Stumpy.

• Ryan - Child neighbour of Stan. He and his sister like to play with Little Red Tractor and help out.

• Amy - Ryan's sister.

• Mr Turvey - Ryan and Amy's father. He likes to run and plays keyboards in Walters band.

• Mrs Turvey - Ryan and Amy's mother. She likes to paint and does arts and crafts.

• Walter - Runs the Babblebrook garage and likes to play rock and roll. Walter is easily lead astray. Walter is lead singer and plays the guitar for his band called Walter and the Wolverines.

• Nicola - Walter's daughter who also runs the garage. She tends to be far more sensible than her father. Nicola also plays an instrument in her fathers band.

• Leo - Walter's nephew, becomes a friend of Ryan an Amy. He is a more than competent drummer who Stands in for Nicola in Walter's Band.

• Sparky - Tow truck which Nicola and Walter drive.

• Rusty - Walter's unreliable car and restoration project. Breaks down regularly.

The series is produced using stop motion

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

 model animation and features unusually detailed sets and models. It features the voices of Derek Griffiths

Derek Griffiths

Derek Griffiths is a British actor who appeared in numerous British children's television series in the 1960s to 1980s and more recently has played parts in TV drama.- Career :...

and Stephen Tompkinson

Stephen Tompkinson

Stephen Tompkinson is a British actor. He is best known for his work in comedy and drama productions such as Drop the Dead Donkey, Ballykissangel, Grafters, In Deep, Wild at Heart and DCI Banks....

The Characters are based on the books by Colin Reeder, which were narrated for TV in the mid 1990s by Brian Glover

Brian Glover

Brian Glover was an English character actor, writer and wrestler. Glover was a professional wrestler, teacher, and finally a film, television and stage actor. He once said, "You play to your strengths in this game. My strength is as a bald-headed, rough-looking Yorkshireman".-Early life:Glover was...

.

Despite apparent similarities to Tractor Tom

Tractor Tom

Tractor Tom is an animated TV program, produced by Contender Entertainment and Hibbert Ralph Entertainment. There are two series of 26 eleven minute episodes produced in 2003 and 2004. There was also a stage show....

, Little Red Tractor has a completely different feel, with more realistic storylines, a larger human cast and no surreal livestock behavior. It is mainly aimed at an audience of two-to-three year olds.

Tractor Tom was produced by Contender, the video distribution company for Little Red Tractor Projects Limited, owners of the original Little Red Tractor series. Despite not having television exposure, Little Red Tractor broke into the top ten children's videos and stayed there for several weeks. In total, the original series sold over 300,000 copies and Contender wanted to duplicate that success. However, the television rights were sold to Keith Littler's Little Entertainment Group because Peter Tye, the director/writer of the series, preferred their expertise in stop frame animation and empathy with the original. Despite losing the television rights to Little Red Tractor, Contender went ahead and produced their inferior, unauthorised version.