Peacock is set to release a new limited series, “I Love You, You Hate Me,” that documents the vicious backlash to the children’s educational show “Barney & Friends,” specifically the dark and hateful reactions to the titular host, Barney the Dinosaur.
Barney was originally created by Sheryl Leach, a Dallas schoolteacher. Leach noticed that her son had outgrown the children’s American songbook series, “Wee Sing Together,” and that there was no other children’s programming that appealed to her son.
Leach formed a team with The Lyon Group, an Allen-based production company, who created a series of home videos that would become “Barney and the Backyard Gang,” released in 1988.
The straight-to-video episodes were distributed locally to stores and schools before it was picked up and redeveloped by PBS, who went on to run the show “Barney & Friends” in 1992.
The show was taped at the Color Dynamics Studios facility in Allen, Texas, for several years. Production then moved to The Studios at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas, and then Carrollton, a suburb of Dallas.
Peacock’s new documentary series, “I Love You, You Hate Me,” will be released on the streaming service on October 12. The show will chronicle the history of the hit children’s educational show and the odd phenomenon of reactionary hate that it drew.
Actor Bob West starred as the friendly purple dinosaur and Variety reports the movie will feature accounts of the hate mail and death threats made against West and his entire family.
“They were violent and explicit, death and dismemberment of my family,” West said in the show’s trailer. “They were gonna come and find me, and they were going to kill me.”
The series’ synopsis states that the show will focus on the “furious backlash — and what it says about the human need to hate. From Barney-bashing to frat parties to homicidal video games, something in American society broke into a million pieces, and it’s never been put together again … or is this just who we were all along?”
This two-part series is produced by Scout Productions, the company behind Netflix’s “Queer Eye.”