From left to right: Ellie, Rafe, Gabrielle, and Mick.
Angels of Jarm is a British children's cartoon that originally aired in 2007 on Milkshake, Channel 5's preschool block.
Far out in space is a small plot of land with a camper inhabited by four angels named Gabrielle, Ellie, Rafe, and Mick. Together, the four angels watch over Jarm, and whenever one of the children of Jarm has a problem, Gabrielle sends at least one of the other three angels into action to help them.
Angels of Jarm contains the following tropes:
- Bigger on the Inside: The angels' golden caravan. From outside, it's only as big as a regular caravan, but the inside is spacious enough to include an entire console with large monitorson the front, which is used to watch over the people of Jarm, and three platforms on the back, with which to teleport the chosen angels on the celestial highway.
- Edutainment Show: The classic "pro-social values" type.
- Extremely Short Intro Sequence: The intro is somewhere around 15 seconds long.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The angels, consisting of the female Gabrielle and Ellie and the male Rafe and Mick.
- Honesty Aesop: In the episode "Honesty is the Best Policy", Mick is sent to Jarm when a girl accidentally destroys a vase in the school by playing with a basketball indoors, but Virgil gets the blame instead since he's close to the vase and holding the basketball by the time the teacher arrives. Mick sets things straight by owning up to his mistake when he accidentally destroys a flower pot outside in the same way, encouraging the girl to also be honest about the mistake she had made earlier.
- Once per Episode: There is a segment in each episode where some background voices say a rhyme about which angel will be selected, followed by the selected angel being sent through the celestial highway, speeding through a rainbow pathway from outer space to Planet Earth.There's work to be done!
Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie
Mick, Mick, Mick, Rafe
Who will keep you safe?
Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie
Rafe, Rafe, Rafe, Mick
Who will be the pick? - Only Six Faces: Every character in the show has the same basic body design, including the same face with large eyes and a small nose and mouth on a circular head.
- Our Angels Are Different: The angels watching over Jarm all wear normal human clothes rather than the typical white robes, making them look exactly like an average human. Their wings are also part of a pack they wear on their backs instead of being one of their body parts.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: All the four angels have names related to Biblical archangels. Gabrielle is the feminine form of Gabriel, Mick and Rafe are diminutives for respectively, Michael and Raphael, and Ellie has "el", the suffix in many archangels' names.
- Ride the Rainbow: The celestial highway that the angels use to travel from their space camper to Planet Earth is represented as a rainbow pathway.
- Sick Episode: In "Missing Murali", Murali, one of the children who goes to Jarm's playschool, ends up sick with the measles and can't go to school. His dad doesn't let anyone enter their house out of fear that his measles will spread to others, so Ellie and the other children of Jarm's playschool work together to make him a big banner to cheer him up.
- Solid Clouds: The angels are seen standing, if not walking on clouds in the intro and end credits.
- Stock Footage: Whenever the angels are riding on the celestial highway. It only changes depending on which angel was chosen at the time, but the animation remains the same.
- Strictly Formula: The events of an episode are thus:
- The three young angels are doing an activity which may be relevant to the plot.
- Gabrielle calls the angels to the caravan to tell them about a problem in Jarm.
- The angels watch the scene unfold via Gabrielle's surveillance system in order to understand today's problem.
- A role call rhyme ensues where, at the end, Gabrielle chooses one angel (with a few exceptions where she ends up choosing two) to fly away on the celestial highway.
- An animation sequence of the angels riding on a rainbow of said celestial highway as they enter the Earth.
- The selected angel introduces themself/themselves to the child(ren) who has/have the problem.
- The angel and children work together to resolve the issue.
- Once the children are all happy again, the angel(s) fly on back home with the children waving them off.
- Sometimes, the angels observe Jarm through their screens again to see how they're getting on. Roll credits.
- Title Theme Tune: "Angels of Jarm will keep you from harm, Angels of Jarm will keep you from harm".
- Token Black: Mick has the darkest skin of the angels.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: It's never specified where the city of Jarm is located, though it looks to be a very cosmopolitan community, with many children of various ethnicities and religious backgrounds co-existing.
- The X of Y: Angels of Jarm.
