Sooty & Co. is a British children's television series, created and presented by Matthew Corbett, produced by Granada Television, and aired on ITV from 6 September 1993 to 14 December 1998. It is the sequel to the children's programme The Sooty Show, which had concluded in 1992, retaining the sitcom format, and focuses on the misadventures of Sooty, Sweep, Soo, Little Cousin Scampi, and Matthew as they try to run a bric a brac shop in Manchester. Episodes were mainly filmed at Granada's main studio in Manchester and around the city, though some episodes were filmed outside of Manchester, including within Scotland, Ireland, and Spain. The programme was the last major children's show for Corbett to front before he retired in 1998, having sold the rights to Sooty and the other characters to his successors Richard Cadell and Liana Bridges, guest stars during a number of episodes in the final series. Following its conclusion, Sooty & Co was succeeded by a new Sooty TV series, entitled Sooty Heights, in 1999. Premise Following the conclusion of The Sooty Show, Matthew Corbett sells up the cottage, before buying a bric-a-brac shop in Manchester for himself (which he actually inherited the shop from a distant aunty), and the puppets Sooty, Sweep, Soo and Little Cousin Scampi, to run in which they buy and sell anything and everything, but with little luck. Like its predecessor, each episode sees Matthew, Sooty and the others being involved in hijinks ranging from trying to make money with the shop, or dealing with an issue that they have to sort out, and included moments of singing songs and providing educational insights. In some episodes, the characters travelled outside of Manchester as part of an episode's plot – one example involved the group going off on holiday to Spain. Brenda Longman, the voice of Soo, was given a physical role in the programme as a regular character named Mo – a market seller whom Matthew tends to have difficulty in selling her anything, and always being made to buy something from her. Alongside the inclusion of a regular character, Sooty & Co also introduced a new element to the Sooty franchise in the form of a specially designed campervan for Sooty and his friends to travel around in, while a variety of guest stars took part in the programme, including Jack Dee, Paul Zerdin, Harry Hill, Neil Buchanan, and