My kids may have outgrown the cartoon Bluey, but I haven’t

‘To my children’s scorn and amazement, it took me most of the first season to properly fix in my head that Bluey and Bingo, her younger sibling, are girls’. Bluey and family in the Fairies episode. Photograph: ABC TV

For British people of a certain generation (mine), it may be the Australian accents that soothe us into a state of pure happiness. It may be the quality of the animation, or the gentle, low-stress storylines. Or it may be that it just caught us at a particularly vulnerable time.

Whatever it is, whenever my children ask what we should watch on TV, I lobby hard to veto Nailed It!, (cake reality show), shouty cartoon Teen Titans, or tween sitcom, Bunk’d, in favour of one of my top viewing pleasures of the moment. My kids lightly protest; at eight, they have almost outgrown Bluey, the Aussie cartoon about a blue dog and her little sister. But I, apparently, have not.