Pinky Dinky Doo

New episodes of Pinky Dinky Doo began airing on Noggin a few days ago. If you've never seen it, this is a wildly imaginitive and very, very silly series designed for preschoolers, one that I enjoy just as much as they do. (Possibly even more.) "Great big fancy words" has become the reference of choice more often than not when I explain a term that my son doesn't know the meaning of.

But the new series looks and sounds very, very different ― where previous episodes had been animated in Flash, and designed to play to the strengths of that process with intentionally flat character design and movement, the entire production is now computer animated. Motion is now more fluid, and the same basic settings have been enhanced with a sense of depth ― but it just doesn't seem right somehow. Most of the elements remain flat, but the addition of the occasional dimensional objects seems incongruous. And the young actress who is the voice of Pinky Dinky Doo (India Ennenga, who from what I gather is now about 13) is obviously maturing.

But the writing seems as clever as ever. Perhaps this will just take a bit of getting used to.