Kerwhizz (strapline: The Quiz with added Whizz) is a British live-action animated children's television game show created by Tony Reed and Alan Robinson, which originally aired on CBeebies between 2008 and 2011. The series uses a mix of CGI and live action, and is targeted towards 4-6-year-olds. Series 1 was filmed in March 2008, and Series 2 was filmed two years later in July 2010.
Kerwhizz is moderated and presented by the Kerwhizzitor (Jacob Scipio), the only regular live-action character. Three teams of two CGI characters, each comprising a human child racer and a part-living, part-mechanical animal pet, must answer five rounds of questions, each featuring a regular 2D animated animal character, to win a choice of pod mod for their respective racing pods. In addition, one of the five rounds offer the chance to win a mystery pod mod. Each pod mod and mystery mod is an unconventional accessory that may or may not give its user a better chance of winning the race. The teams are cheered on by three groups of live-action children dressed in the teams' colours and waving team flags. Points are scored based on how many questions are answered correctly.
All of the questions are multiple-choice with the answers being colour-coded red, green, yellow, and blue. Once the question rounds are complete, the teams choose their pod mods. Then, the teams' pods are assembled and built around them and their respective pod mods are installed, fitted and added to their pods. The pods are then raised through the roof of the studio into the CGI race world. Each race world is a themed racing environment (the questions usually include clues to the theme) containing three or occasionally four zones and each story and race comprises two or occasionally three laps (except in "The Deserted Desert Dash" which is a novelty race with no set route and a hidden finish line). All of the teams are likely to encounter unexpected setbacks and opportunities along the way, making the outcome of each race unpredictable. Each episode ends when the race is won and the winner revealed, after which some of the teams are shown doing activities based on the theme of the race, announced by the Kerwhizzitor.
These characters appear in the flash-animated question sequences. None of them speak, since the questions are all read by the Kerwhizzitor. In many episodes they, or characters based on their designs, also appear in CGI form in the race world sequences, where they are much bigger than the human contestants.
Development of the series was announced in February 2008, when CBeebies had commissioned a live-action animated multi-platform gameshow titled Kerwhizz with CBeebies' in-house production arm. CBeebies Production would produce the upcoming series Kerwhizz while Blue Zoo Animation Studio would handle animation services for the gameshow. In April, Belgian production company Studio 100 joined the series, handling distribution to Kerwhizz worldwide.
British psychologist Aric Sigman refers to Kerwhizz as a perfect example of what television makers claim is educational, despite his insistence to the contrary.
In 2011, cartoonist Michael Mitchell sued the BBC and CBeebies, claiming that Kerwhizz human CGI characters were based on his own designs for a proposed series called The Bounce Bunch. The BBC and CBeebies denied these claims, pointing out that any similarities between the characters were coincidental. In the England and Wales Patents County Court in December 2011, His Honour Judge Birss, QC found that the Kerwhizz characters did not infringe Mr Mitchell's copyright.