When pre-schoolers are plonked in front of ABC Kids’ new factual series Fizzy and Suds, they might not know it, but they’ll be watching a new form of early childhood entertainment.

Designed to tap into the divergent thinking that comes naturally to most in this age group, and particularly to the neurodiverse, the show features two bubbles whose inquisitive minds go off on all sorts of tangents. An episode about dogs will deliver information about vets and the jobs canines can do, before spinning off into stop-motion sequences in which hot-dog sausages run around barking.

A presentation about boats will switch from the engine room to toy ferries with fairy wings floating in a bathtub. Fizzy, the older bubble sibling, can be heard “vocal stimming”, repeating the ends of words to self-soothe.

“We have a unique perspective through Fizzy and Suds,” explains writer and director Genevieve Clay-Smith. “There isn’t another factual segmented show that takes this neurodiverse perspective and really gets into the concept of Extreme and Intense Interests [EIIs], which a lot of children have.

“Divergent thinking is prevalent in all children, and we lose that as we get older, as we start to think inside boxes and get moulded into society. Divergent thinking is when we can make interesting connections between images or noises or shapes, and link them to something else entirely.

“A child may see a train from an overpass and it might remind them of a caterpillar, and they might say, ‘Ooh, a caterpillar!’, and an adult will go, ‘What are you talking about? It’s a train.’”

Since her student short film Be My Brother won best film at Tropfest 2009, launching the career of Gerard O’Dwyer, one of Australia’s most prolific actors with Down syndrome, Clay-Smith has been passionate about inclusivity in filmmaking. Her non-profit production company, Bus Stop Films, mentors people with disabilities, many of whom are then employed through her commercial company, Taste Creative.

Following a speech she gave at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival kids’ conference, Clay-Smith was invited to produce two segments for Sesame Street. So when she was approached by the ABC to bring Fizzy and Suds to life, she naturally insisted on disability representation. Along with some children who appear in live-action scenes, crew members – including the cinematographer and director’s attachment, and some designers – live with visible or invisible disability.