Odd Squad (stylized as ODD SQUAD) is a children's live action educational television series that premiered on TVOKids in Canada and PBS Kids in the United States on November 26, 2014. The series ran for three seasons and 108 episodes in a span of seven years, airing its final episode on July 8, 2022. Similar to Cyberchase and Peg + Cat, other math-centered programs aired on PBS Kids, the series involves child characters using mathematical concepts (addition, multiplication, using data in graphs, etc.) to advance each episode's plot. The series was created by Tim McKeon and Adam Peltzman and is co-produced by Sinking Ship Entertainment and Fred Rogers Productions in association with TVOKids and Ici Radio-Canada Télé. The series features child actors (whose characters are the employees of the "Odd Squad") who use indirect reasoning and basic math to solve and investigate strange happenings in their town. The series is a general satire of the police procedural and spy fiction genres and uses humour to teach the audience basic math skills and math-related topics. In the UK, the series aired on CBBC and BBC Two. In Australia, it aired on ABC Kids and ABC Me.
Description
The series follows the exploits of Odd Squad, an organization run entirely by children, that solves peculiar problems using math skills. In the first two seasons, it typically features two employees of the organization's investigation division that work in precinct 13579 of the organization—Agents Olive (Dalila Bela) and Otto (Filip Geljo) in the first season and Olympia (Anna Cathcart) and Otis (Isaac Kragten) in the second season. Selected episodes feature other types of employees of the fictional organization, like security officers, so-called "tube operators" and scientists. The names of the employees nearly always start with the letter O. Agents are typically assigned cases by their boss, Ms. O (Millie Davis), and travel via a system of interconnected tubes to get to their destinations. They deduce the solution to the problem or how to detain the perpetrator by using basic mathematical principles that are typically the focus of the episode. Often, they cannot solve the problem at the scene and must go back to their precinct's headquarters or to the "Mathroom", a sentient space that communicates through large paper fortune tellers and can unfold them to display information to help the agents see connections and better solve their case. Along with math, agents also use "gadgets" designed by the scientists; in the first season, Agent Oscar (Sean Michael Kyer) heads the lab, gaining an assistant, Agent Oona (Olivia Presti), in early season two who eventually takes over the lab after Oscar is promoted. The characters also have to deal with a variety of recurring villains who often put a mathematical spin on their plots. The seal of the Odd Squad headquarters depicts a jackalope carrying a shield in front of it (bearing an image of the seal—an instance of the Droste effect) and bananas at each side of it. The third season, dubbed Odd Squad Mobile Unit, sees a setting change from precinct 13579 to a van; in this season, four agents are assigned by the Big O (Davis) to work in the van and travel the world solving cases where local precincts either can't reach or need extra help.