Her fantastical tales from Peru – including a tower of guinea pigs who sent one of their kind to the moon – are designed to encourage imaginative storytelling among young children.

Besuch. Boris ein Meerschweinchenmann ist plötzlich da. Doch Olga gefällt das gar nicht, denn alles in dem Haus gehört ihr. Auch das Fressen. Wie bekommt sie diesen Eindringling nur wieder los. Oder ist er gar nicht so schlimm wie es jetzt scheint? There were eight picture books released, the first of which, “Olga Counts Her Blessing”, was released in the year 1975, while the last, “Olga’s Special Day”, was released in the same year. Sure, she was also interesting to read about, to see her live her life, to see her talk about the changing of seasons, to see her views on her home, to see her make friends with even the unlikeliest animals (cats). If Olga proves a hit, the BBC could share in merchandise sales and spin-offs with the Michael Bond estate.

Olga’s garden audience rapt by her storytelling includes Noel the cat, Fangio the Argentine hedgehog, and Graham the tortoise. Her tall tales are gently shown to be distant from the truth by what humans say. Olga has a boyfriend, named Boris. He lives near the sea, and is the dad of Olga’s kids. He watches far too much television, but this is what makes him an excellent storyteller. Boris is able to rival Olga at telling stories. With Jules and I both acting, I’ve spent a lot of time making the tea and looking after our boys when she was out working, so it wasn’t a great leap to portray Mr Sawdust. I finally managed to meet Michael’s daughter Karen to show her my ideas. She immediately ran off to get her father’s work and showed me that the ideas he had to bring Olga to the screen, were almost identical to the scripts I’d written. The Tales of Olga da Polga is an utterly charming children's book from 1971 by Michael Bond, an award-winning author more famous for his stories about Paddington Bear, who first made his appearance in 1958. These stories, however, all feature Olga da Polga, a self-important, mischievous and imaginative guinea pig, who loves telling wildly exaggerated tales about her experiences to her friends.

He had previously bought a bear from Selfridges, which he christened Paddington, as a present for his wife. Programme makers from Maramedia, a Glasgow-based production company which specialises in filming animals, approached Jankel with the idea of making a show based on the books. Some of the characters in the new 13-part series are drawn from her childhood, just as they were in her father’s original stories.

There is also Fangio, a hedgehog with Argentinian blood, who sometimes stays in a box in the Sawdust family's garage, being fed on bread and milk. He becomes a good friend of Olga da Polga, and invites her to break out of her confinement and experience "freedom". She visits his home in the "Elysian Fields", but in the course of doing so, realises just how different the two creatures are. She finds that his so-called paradise is just a patch of waste land beyond the shrubbery, dank, dark, dirty - and full of insects and worms, which she shudderingly discovers, Fangio loves. When Paddington first hit screens, the BBC dominated children’s viewing. But CBeebies is no longer the default choice for children aged six and under. Facing competition from streaming platforms and YouTube, its audience reach slipped from 6 to 5 per cent last year. Olga loves to watch the goings and comings in the house and gets into all kinds of trouble and goes on many great adventures. Jankel said her father’s writing always included animals, from his books about Thursday the mouse, to his adult detective series about Monsieur Pamplemousse and his faithful bloodhound Pommes Frites: “Somehow he could see an animal’s character coming through.” Her garden companions soon discover that Olga loves an audience and from the moment she arrives she tells them stories about her wild and exciting adventures. Although they are not always sure whether to believe everything Olga says, one thing is certain-since Olga moved in, life is never dull!