Roy is an Irish animated children's television series which was broadcast by TRTÉ in Ireland, CBBC in the United Kingdom and ABC3 in Australia. It aired from 1 July 2009 to 1 April 2015. The show centres on the titular character Roy O'Brien. He is portrayed as the 11-year-old animated son of a live-action family. Episodes mostly revolve around the adventures and challenges he faces as he settles into his new school in a suburb of Dublin. The series is filmed as a mockumentary and based on the short film Badly Drawn Roy, which was commissioned by the Irish Film Board, RTÉ and the Arts Council of Ireland through their frameworks scheme for new animation.

Production

The series was commissioned by CBBC and produced with funding from RTÉ and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. Both the series and the short film were produced by JAM Media. Roy's character animation is hand drawn in Flash with the compositing and effects produced in Adobe's After Effects. A second season was broadcast in early 2012. In November 2012, the second season of Roy won the 2012 Children's BAFTA Drama Award. Filming began on a third and fourth season in January 2013. The third season began airing on 23 January 2014, and the fourth began airing 20 January 2015.

Main cast

Episodes

Series 1 (2009)

Series 2 (2012)

Series 3 (2014)

Series 4 (2015)

Franchise

Two spin-off series of Roy were announced and commissioned by BBC, forming the Roy franchise. Little Roy is about an animated five year old boy on a journey of self-discovery through imaginative play. It aired from 2016 to 2017 on both CBBC and CBeebies. The Roy Files is a spin-off that focuses on the life of Roy O’Brien, Ireland's only cartoon boy living in the real world. Roy turns his history homework into a scrapbook about himself that highlights all four seasons of Roy.