Thomas & Friends (series 22)

The 22nd series of the children's television show Thomas & Friends began airing on 3 September 2018 in the UK, and on 17 September 2018 in the US. The series follows the adventures of Thomas and his friends on the railways of the Island of Sodor, and is based on The Railway Series books written by the Rev. W. Awdry.

Production

Series 22 marks the first major "reboot" of the franchise since the show switched to full CGI in the thirteenth season. The episodes keep their eleven minute-long runtime, but have now been divided into seven minute-long stories, with an additional four minutes reserved for a variety of segments like sing-along karaoke songs, music videos or Thomas talking directly with the audience about lessons learned during a particular episode. Among many other changes, Edward and Henry have been removed from the Steam Team to make room for Nia and Rebecca, and the narrator has been replaced with Thomas talking to the audience (however, Mark Moraghan had said that he still works on the series).

Series 22 is set after Big World! Big Adventures!: The Movie. The season is split into two halves; the first half sees Thomas travelling around the world and visiting India, Australia and China, while the second half takes place back on the Island of Sodor. The season is also set to be released on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu in the fall of 2018.^[1]

Voice cast

The following voice actors were listed in the closing credits for the series:

• John Hasler as Thomas^[2]
• Chipo Chung
• Teresa Gallagher
• Siu-See Hung
• Dan Li
• Windson Liong
• Keith Wickham

The following are also considered main characters but were not listed in the credits:

• Yvonne Grundy voices Nia, a steam locomotive from Kenya. She is based on the East African Railways’ ED1 class.^[2][3][4]
• Rachael Miller voices Rebecca, a yellow steam locomotive from Mainland-Britain. Her design is based on a Southern Railway West Country 4-6-2 Pacific engine.^[3][4][5]

Episodes

References