General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20268 min read

The Curiosity Show

The Curiosity Show was an Australian educational children's television program about science, produced in Adelaide, South Australia, and broadcast nationally on the Nine Network from 1972 until 1990.¹ It was hosted by Dr Rob Morrison, a zoologist, and Dr Deane Hutton, and produced by Banksia Productions.²^•³ After the hosts reacquired the rights in 2013, the show's archive found a large new audience on YouTube.³

Key fact	Detail
Run	Produced and broadcast from 1972 until 1990, with some later cable TV screenings¹^•⁴
Output	Around 500 episodes across 19 seasons, later cut into roughly 5,000 self-contained segments⁵^•³
Audience	Children aged 8 to 14; one hour per episode until 1980, then 30 minutes⁶
Reach	Screened in Australasia, Europe and Asia; dubbed into German with German actors and widely broadcast in Europe⁴
Award	Prix Jeunesse International, 1984, for excellence in children's television¹
Online revival	Rights secured by the hosts in 2013; YouTube channel launched that year, reaching 456,000 subscribers and about 84 million views by late 2026³^•⁷

Spoilers

For a show with no plot, the spoilers are the demonstrations themselves, and knowing the trick never spoils it. Here is the series at speed.

Plot

The Curiosity Show is not a serial. No story carries from week to week, no characters go on a journey, nothing ends on a cliffhanger. The closest thing it has to a plot is the running argument it makes, episode after episode for nearly two decades: a child with matchsticks, rubber bands, cardboard, string, and a plastic bottle can do real science tonight, without buying anything.

Each episode opens in the studio with Morrison, the zoologist, and Hutton, the science educator, splitting the show the way two old friends split a conversation. One poses a question or a puzzle. The other answers it, or better, makes the audience answer it first. Hutton's signature move was to state a hypothesis to the camera, pause, then declare "well, I'm glad you asked" before answering himself, a joke that works because he was the only one who had asked. The demonstrations are the episodes' real protagonists. A ping-pong ball balances impossibly on a stream of air, wobbling but refusing to fall, and the show explains Bernoulli's principle while the ball is still floating. Objects are dunked in liquid nitrogen and come out frozen, brittle, and smoking, to the delight of everyone involved. Longer segments walk viewers through a construction project step by step, ending with the show's other catchphrase, "here's one I prepared earlier," as the finished model is revealed beside the half-built one on the bench.

The moment the show is remembered for is not one stunt but the standing promise behind all of them: the experiment you can do yourself. The household materials were deliberate, not a budget constraint. Morrison and Hutton wanted to demystify science, so every demonstration was chosen because a child anywhere in Australia could replicate it with what was already in the house. The show was scrupulous about safety: presenters regularly instructed viewers to get parental permission before using flames, dangerous liquids, or sharp objects like scissors and knives, a refrain as familiar as the catchphrases. That combination, a trick you just saw, an explanation you just understood, and a shopping list you already have, is what generations of Australian children took away from it.

Across nineteen seasons the formula barely changed, and the longevity is proof it didn't need to. Episode titles from the archive give the flavor: "A Geometric Marathon" aired October 18, 1988, and "Through the wooden eyes of the donkey" aired April 10, 1985, both promising exactly what the show always delivered, a puzzle with a physical answer. The run ended on December 31, 1990, when the final episode aired and the Nine Network axed the show after eighteen years on air. Morrison and Hutton simply stopped, the tapes went into storage, and the show settled into memory as a fixture of Australian children's television.

The story has one more scene, twenty-three years later. In 2013 the two presenters announced they had purchased the remaining rights to the show for an undisclosed sum, and later that year they launched a YouTube channel to make the episodes and individual segments available again. The show that taught children to do it themselves ended up doing exactly that for its own afterlife: no network, no studio, just the presenters, a video platform, and an audience that had grown up and never quite forgotten the floating ping-pong ball.

Characters

There are no fictional characters, only the two presenters, who were themselves.

Rob Morrison (as himself) is a zoologist and professor, the steadier half of the double act, often handling the natural-history side of the show and the careful, methodical demonstrations. His on-screen persona is the patient scientist who assumes the audience is smart, which turns out to be the correct assumption for a children's show.

Deane Hutton (as himself) is a science educator and the show's showman, the one most associated with the demonstrations, the hypotheses, and the catchphrase "well, I'm glad you asked." His enthusiasm for freezing things with liquid nitrogen and building things out of rubbish made him the face of the series for many viewers.

Origins and format

The show was launched in 1972 by NWS9 Adelaide as a spin-off from the station's pre-school series Here's Humphrey, and like Humphrey it was broadcast nationally across the Nine Network.¹ According to Morrison, commercial channels were then required to make programs for school-age children, not just pre-schoolers, and the new show was taped in the same studio while Humphrey B. Bear, unable to speak, gestured in the background trying to upstage the intruders in his program.² An early version was titled Humphrey B. Bear's Curiosity Show and hosted by folk singer Patsy Biscoe, before Morrison and Hutton became the presenters.⁸

The program presented segments on science, natural history and technology.¹ Morrison described the design intent as dealing with science and technology without overtly teaching it, using natural history segments, making and doing, and art and music segments; art pieces used mathematics such as the golden mean, and simple lithography worked because water repels oil.⁹ The hosts deliberately used everyday household items such as old rusty cans, scrap cardboard and aluminum foil, so viewers could repeat demonstrations with materials already at hand, which made the program popular in regional and remote areas where shopping is difficult.⁴ Typical content included making a periscope, joining straws into a very long drinking straw, and building gadgets while explaining the underlying physics and chemistry.⁶^•¹⁰

Presenters. Rob Morrison and Deane Hutton both held PhDs in science, academic teaching positions, and experience in children's television, and their calm, unhurried presentation style was aimed at letting young viewers absorb the material.⁶ Morrison trained as a zoologist and combined an academic career with television and radio broadcasting.²

Broadcast reach and recognition

The show was sold to overseas markets including Europe, and in 1984 it won the international Prix Jeunesse award for excellence in children's television.¹ Although the original broadcasts were in English for Australian and New Zealand audiences, the program was dubbed into German, revoiced with German actors, and in that form was widely broadcast throughout Europe.⁴ Morrison's memoir credits the show with screening nationally in Australia and in 14 countries overseas.⁸

Production ended in 1990, after almost two decades and around 500 episodes.¹^•⁵ One episode-count figure differs: the Nostalgia Central retrospective lists 149 episodes of 60 or 30 minutes, against the roughly 500 episodes reported by Television.AU, TheTVDB, and press coverage of the archive.⁶^•¹^•⁵

The 2013 rights buyout and YouTube revival

The original presenters had always owned a half-share of the rights, but the remainder was tied up with Banksia Productions, which went into liquidation.¹ In 2013, Hutton and Morrison bought out Banksia's share, gaining access to around 500 episodes, and launched a YouTube channel to release the material as segments.¹ Morrison argued that online delivery suits the format better than television did, because viewers can freeze or replay a making-and-doing segment to see how something is made.¹

The archive grew steadily and then went viral. By October 2018, after five years online, the channel had accumulated almost 4 million views; in the month before the ABC's report that total rose past 11 million as viewers began sharing segments with friends.³ In 2019 the channel received YouTube's Silver Creator's award, and at that point it had more than 120,000 subscribers, with some segments reaching several million views.⁴ By late 2026 the channel stood at 456,000 subscribers, about 84 million total views, and roughly 1,600 uploaded videos.⁷ A single new episode was also produced for YouTube in 2014 in association with Kellogg's.¹¹

Books and legacy

Beyond television, Morrison and Hutton published 11 books based on Curiosity Show activities, and released three DVDs, including Deane and Rob's Curiosity Show Collection – 20 things to make and do.⁴ Morrison's memoir Curious Recollections – life in the Curiosity Show, published by Wakefield Press in 2019, recounts the show's production history.⁴ In 2025 the Australian Science Communicators awarded Morrison and Hutton a shared President's Medal, citing their hands-on approach to science education across audiences in 14 countries and the continuing reach of the YouTube channel.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Nature, wildlife, and science documentary series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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