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Can we describe it? Yes, we can!

Bob the Builder is a children's television series created by Keith Chapman and produced by HOT Animation and distributed by HiT Entertainment, first broadcast in 1999 which involves the eponymous manual labourer and a group of living construction vehicles accompanied by rock music. The original series (up until the conclusion of Ready, Steady, Build!) was regularly broadcast on The BBC's television channels, including CBeebies. In the U.S., it was broadcast on Nickelodeon and broadcast on Nick Jr.. from 2001 to 2004. After that, PBS took over airing it.

In 2015, the series was rebooted with new designs and animation by Mainframe Entertainment for Seasons 1 and 2. In 2018, the 2015 series was animated by DHX Media (now WildBrain) for the third season. The reboot proved to be far less popular than the original series, with many panning the characters new personalities and designs.

An animated film is currently in development and will star the voice of Anthony Ramos, who will also serve as producer.

This programme contains examples of:

• Art Evolution: Initially inverted, but then played straight. The show started off as a rather high-quality Stop Motion series. Then, when it was relaunched as Ready, Steady, Build!, it changed to low-quality CGI animation like several other kids shows seemed to be turning into at the time. The reboot (despite the controversial redesigns) is animated with much better CGI from Mainframe Entertainment.
• Birthday Episode: The classic series has two of them:
  • Bob celebrates his birthday in the Series 1 episode "Bob's Birthday", but unknown to him, Wendy and the others are just pretending that it's an ordinary day and plan to surprise Bob when he comes home from a job.
  • Wendy celebrates her birthday in two episodes. In "Wendy's Magic Birthday", Bob and the gang wish her a happy birthday, but she doesn't want any fuss, so Bob and the gang prepare to surprise Wendy with a magic birthday show for her.
  • Although not part of the classic series, the Ready, Steady, Build! episode "Wendy's Birthday Surprise" has the gang getting ready for her surprise birthday party, but Scoop wants to get everything ready by himself. Unfortunately, Wendy's birthday present falls down a well that Bob and the team were working on causing Scoop to realise the error of his actions and that he needs help from his friends to complete the job and get the party ready on time.
• Black Bead Eyes: Everyone (except for the vehicles) have these kind of eyes in the classic series.
• Bowdlerise: The original version of the episode "Wallpaper Wendy" features a scene of Bob mumbling after the wallpaper gets stuck on his face, and this mumbling was misinterpreted as him swearing the words "fucking hell." The later versions of the episode had Bob's mumbling muted. The original version with the mumbling is available on the Bob's White Christmas VHS release. Additionally, the U.S. version of the episode "Travis and Scoop's Race Day" changes Spud calling Travis "stupid" to him calling Travis by name.
• The Cameo: The special episode, "Scrambler to the Rescue" features toys of other HiT Entertainment properties in the toy factory; Terence the Crocodile from Rubbadubbers, and the titular character of Thomas & Friends (complete with his whistle sound effect and two coaches that are similar in color to Gordon's express coaches).
• Catchphrase:
  • Once an Episode (or once with Bob and once with another character), someone would ask, 'Can we [verb, usually 'fix'] it?', to which other characters would respond, 'Yes, we can!' - long before someone from America became associated with the catchphrase.
  • Spud's "Sorry, (character)," "It won't happen again, (character)," and "Spud's on the job, (Bob\Wendy\character)!"
  • The main machines:
    • Scoop: "No prob, Bob!"
    • Muck: "Muck to the rescue!" and "Let's get mucky!"
    • Dizzy: "Brilliant!"
    • Roley: "Rock and roll!"
    • Lofty: Er/Uh, yeah, I think so!" (usually said in response to the "Can we [verb] it?" routine)
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Several characters are absent in the 2015 reboot, most notably Travis, Spud, and Farmer Pickles (though Farmer Pickles returned in 2018). Spud was not in the 2015 series because the reboot has a more realistic and gritty aesthetic, and a sentient scarecrow that goes around causing trouble would break that illusion...despite a bunch of talking machines still being part of the cast.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The construction vehicles.
• Construction Is Awesome: Bob and his crew seem to mostly have fun doing their job, and the work is also sometimes underlined with cool rock-styled music.
• Cowardly Sidekick: Lofty. Downplayed in the rebooted series, with Lofty having more subtle instances of nervousness and does not say "Uh, yeah, I think so!" after the "Yes, we can!" part.
• Cultural Translation: Despite the series being pretty blatantly set in Britain, the American version is dubbed with US accents. Reputedly the dub is at least partly to avoid confusion over words like "football".
• Cute Machines: All of the machines on the show, including of course Bob’s crew, are all designed to look adorable. Being stand-ins for the show’s target audience, they also behave and play like young children would (although in most versions, all of them are voiced by adults).
• Darker and Edgier: The 2017 feature film special "Mega Machines" is noticeably darker compared to even earlier episodes, with its first ever villain (Conrad) who outright threatens to scrap his machines if they don't do as he says, and a full-on flooding that's taken surprisingly seriously.
• Denser and Wackier: The third season of the reboot is notably cartoonier, and has looser physics, than the first two; an easy way to observe this change is to notice that the second season had an episode, “Jumping Muck”, about the fact that Muck can’t actually jump, while in the third season episode “Floating Away”, Muck is able to jump from the drifting segment of the floating bridge to a still-connected segment.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: In the reboot, the ringtone on Bob’s cellphone is an instrumental remix version of the theme tune.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The UK theme song is sung by Neil Morrissey, the voice of Bob, Roley, Lofty and Farmer Pickles. The late William Dufris, the original US voice of Bob, also sang the theme in early US episodes before Morrissey re-recorded it with an American accent at some point, although it's not entirely clear when.
• Dreadful Musician: Bob in "Bob's Bugle". He constructed a trumpet out of leftover brass radiator pipes and a funnel, and had no idea that the music he was playing from his trumpet was so awful that everyone (except Roley) couldn't bear it. The terrible music kept the machines awake one night when Bob played his makeshift trumpet before going to bed.
• Dub Species Change: The American dub changes every mention of hedgehogs into porcupines.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the original 1997 pilot, Bob and Scoop both looked completely different, while Scoop was originally named Digger and voiced by Stuart Greenall instead of Rob Rackstraw.
  • Wendy exclusively worked as a secretary throughout the first series and early in the second, complete with her standard outfit consisting of a checkered green suit jacket and red skirt. During Series 2, her secretary role suddenly vanished in favor of her becoming a builder, and she received her more familiar dark blue hard hat and blue jeans ("Tea Set Travis" even shows her old jacket being recycled); her shirt, originally light blue, would become green in Series 3 as well. The intro would be modified in Series 4 and US airings to include a clip of Wendy doing construction work. Despite this, Wendy was still briefly seen in her original outfit in the show's opening and closing sequences until the Project: Build It era's opening and closing sequences.
  • In early classic episodes of the US dub, William Dufris, the original US voice of Bob, sang the theme song. At some point, it was re-recorded by Neil Morrissey, who also sang the UK theme.
  • The first series is the only one mastered in fullscreen in the UK. Series 2 onwards is mastered in widescreen.
  • The credits sequence was 40 seconds long in Series 1. Starting in Series 2 it's cut down to 30 seconds and in Ready, Steady, Build! it's condensed further to 20 seconds.
• Economy Cast: Most characters in the UK dub are played by the same handful of people, namely Neil Morrissey, Rob Rackstraw, Kate Harbour, and later Rupert Degas and Emma Tate. The US dub has more voice actors, however.
• The Eeyore: Lofty.
• Egopolis: The main location for the original series is called Bobsville, named after Bob's father, Robert, who built most of the town himself.
• Episode Title Card: Starting with the third season of the reboot, Bob’s voice (or sometimes that of another character) will not only read out the title, but actually say a short phrase containing it. For instance:
  Bob: Join me and the team as we go… Floating Away.
• Filthy Fun: Muck likes getting dirty, and claims he would roll in the mud nonstop if he was Dizzy's size.
• Foreshadowing: In "Clumsy Roley", Mr. Fothergill says he thinks he may be allergic to parrots. This theory is confirmed in the season 7 episode "Hamish's New Home".
• Four-Fingered Hands: All humans in the original series have this. However, it was one of the most notable shows to be re-shot in Japan so that the characters have five fingers on each hand due to cultural reasons.
• Genki Girl: Dizzy the concrete mixer.
• The Ghost: Bird is still mentioned in the intro for “Project: Build It”, but hardly ever appears.
• Injured Limb Episode: In one episode, a background character Mavis sprains her ankle on a jogging machine.
• Involuntary Cheating: In "Scoop and Travis' Race Day", Scoop challenges Travis to a race to see who's the fastest vehicle in Bobsville. To ensure that Travis wins the race, Spud sets up a cardboard brick wall, a traffic light, and two road barriers to slow Scoop down, with neither Scoop nor Travis being aware of Spud's plan. When Scoop manages to win the race anyway, an outraged Spud drops his bag of things that slowed Scoop down. Travis is disappointed in Spud, saying those things aren't the kind of help he wanted.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Spud will get his comeuppance for the trouble he caused for Bob and his team in most episodes.
  • In "Travis Paints the Town", Spud secretly hooks the line-marking machine onto Travis and tricks him into hurrying off to the duck pond saying that Farmer Pickles wants him there immediately. However, Spud is soon found out by Farmer Pickles and Bob who then punish Spud by forcing him to clean up the lines that Travis has left behind as well as the white paint spillage from the line marking machine after Travis swerved to avoid crashing into Muck.
  • In "Naughty Spud" when Bob is on the roof of Travis' new shed that is under construction, Spud takes the ladder behind his back and uses it to pick all the apples from the tree before coming back with a tummy ache after eating too many apples.
• Missing Mom:
  • JJ lives with his daughter, Molly, whose mother is never seen nor mentioned.
  • Leo from the reboot. His father Curtis is a recurring character, but his mother is never seen or mentioned.
• The Movie: While the show had a few 50-minute specials early on ("A Christmas to Remember", "The Knights of Can-a-Lot" (or "The Knights of Fix-a-Lot" in the US), "Snowed Under: The Bobblesberg Winter Games", and "Built to be Wild"), there wasn't an actual movie as such until the show's first feature length movie "Race to the Finish". The short lived Ready, Steady, Build! series also had two "movie specials" ^note which are just 6 connected episodes with exclusive recap segments in between ("The Legend of the Golden Hammer" (or "The Golden Hammer: The Movie" in the US) and "The Big Dino Dig"). The 2015 reboot only had one entitled "Mega Machines: The Movie".
• Mr. Fixit: There's a reason he's called "Bob The Builder."
• Musical Chores: In the reboot, “We Are A Team” plays during each episode’s big construction project.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The reboot aired on PBS Kids, which was also the channel that aired the last few seasons of the original incarnation of the show. As a result, some PBS stations used an up next bumper for the Ready, Steady, Build! series, which has a different animation style than the reboot does.
• New Sound Album: Or rather, "New Sound Season". The background music of "Project: Build It" features much more of a synthpop sound, in contrast to the rock-oriented score of the original episodes.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: Bob and Wendy's relationship is kept mostly platonic during the show.
• No Antagonist: For the stop-motion and CGI, series, the closest character the show had to an antagonist was Spud, who can be a bit troublesome at times but means no harm. The reboot special Mega Machines features the first villain in the franchise, Conrad.
• Obliviously Evil: In Mega Machines, Thud and Crunch are extreme jerkasses to Muck, then Lofty gets an idea when he sees Conrad belittling them, which causes them to cower. After confronting them about their behaviour, their confused reactions heavily imply that they've been bullied so much by Conrad that they think that acting like him is the equivalent of being polite. They get over it in the end.
• Oh, Crap!: A lot of this happens in most episodes if something goes wrong or has happened.
  • In "A Christmas To Remember", Bob, Banger and Mr. Bentley all have one each within their thoughts when Mayor Bunty Ferguson announces for Lennie Lazenby (who lost his voice due to a sore throat) to switch on the Christmas lights.
  Bob: Oh no! I hope they don't blow again!
  Banger: Oh no! I forgot to change the guitar!
  Mr. Bentley: (while sweating nervously) Oh no! What's the mayor going to say?
• Out of Focus: Bird's appearances became much more limited as the original episodes proceeded, and he was pretty much entirely Put on a Bus in "Project: Build It". To a degree, Pilchard also started to appear less over the course of the first series.
• Padding:
  • On Nickelodeon, the program was filled out by a pair of 2-minute stories that came after the two main 9-minute stories.
  • PBS was all over the place with this when it aired the show. The "Project: Build It" episodes would start with a few warmup animations (Dizzy listening to music, Muck coming across some rabbit while moving rocks) before showing Bob and Wendy greeting each other and Bob waking the machines up, saying it's gonna be a busy day. Short filler segments would be shown during the programs, which would wind down with everyone saying good night and going to bed, followed a few outro animations (the same thing as the warmup ones). Sometimes even music videos and character bios would be shown during the program.
• Perpetual Smiler: The humans always have a smile on their faces, even if they aren't happy (for example, in the first episode, when Wendy cries because she thinks she lost Pilchard, she's still appears to be smiling). Averted with the machines, who can change expressions. This is averted in Ready, Steady, Build! onwards, as the CGI allows the human characters to frown and express negative emotions.
• Rail Enthusiast: Mr. Bentley loves trains, with one episode involving his wife requesting Bob to build him a model train set for his birthday.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In-Universe: Ace was the star of a very popular TV show, but got fired after accidentally squashing his boss' empty car with a huge boulder.
• Rule of Three: Ready, Steady, Build! is known for the three strikes formula (known for prominently featuring in both HIT eras of Thomas & Friends) plaguing nearly every episode. Prior to this, later episodes of the Project: Build It era started utilising it.
• Scenery Porn: Sunflower Valley in the "Project: Build It" era. It doesn't look anything like the rather mundane scenery of the original series.
• Setting Update: The rebooted series has a much more modern-day look to it, with Bob now based in a bustling city and smartphones and tablets often being present. The redesigned machines also more closely resemble the types of construction vehicles seen in modern-day use. During the original series, this was also played straight with the move to Sunflower Valley.
• She's a Man in Japan:
  • Muck is male in the UK, and female in the American English and Swiss German dubs. In the rebooted series, however, he is male in both dubs.
  • In both series, Scoop is female in the Swedish and Polish dubs.
  • Dizzy is male in the Romanian and Slovenian dubs.
  • Roley is female in the Swedish dub.
• Slasher Smile:
  • Every human character in this show (as well as Spud) is prone to these.
  • In the rebooted series, the machines are now also prone to these.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Dizzy is the only female machine in Bob's crew. Subverted in the US dub of the original series, since Muck is referred to as female in said dub.
  • Same thing with Sumsy in Project: Build It, she's the only female machine owned by Farmer Pickles.
• Spoofing in the Rain: The music video for the show's cover of Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" features the human cast imitating the famous musical during the second chorus.
• Strictly Formula: Almost every episode of the original series has a character's name in it.
• Story Arc: Ready, Steady, Build! had two for their "feature-length specials/movies", (unlike Thomas & Friends, the specials were produced as six standalone episodes that aired as three half-hour episodes in the US and six standalone episodes in the UK); "The Legend of the Golden Hammer" (Spud and Scrambler searching for pirate treasure) and The Big Dino Dig (building the dinosaur theme park).
• Strong Family Resemblance: Bob and his twin brother, Tom, look like younger versions of their father, Robert.
• Theme Tune Roll Call: The original theme song lists the main cast as such:
  Scoop, Muck, and Dizzy
  And Roley, too
  Lofty and Wendy
  Join the crew
  Bob and the gang
  Have so much fun
  Working together
  To get the job done!
• Toilet Humor: A deleted scene in Snowed Under features Mr. Beasley getting defecated on by a bunch of seagulls. This scene is only available on the DVD.
• Three Shorts: This is how the show was presented when it premiered in North America: An 8-minute story, a 1-2 minute short, another 8-minute story, and another 1-2 minute short. (The 1-2 minute shorts were often repeated, as they were created as timefillers.) PBS airings also added a few warmup animations (Dizzy listening to music, Muck coming across some rabbits while moving rocks, etc.) , before showing Wendy and Bob greeting each other outside their residences and Bob waking the machines up, saying it's going to be a busy day. After the stories, the episode would wind down with everyone saying good night and going to bed, followed a few outro animations (the same as warmup ones, although they generally avoided reusing a specific episode's warmup animations as the outro ones;). Sometimes even music videos and character bios would be shown during the program.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Lofty is often skeptical and has to be reminded of all the great things he can do.
• You Don't Look Like You: The 2015 reboot, where the humans are more realistic looking. The machines were vastly different as well.