International TV award for Scots CBBC show Katie Morag

Children TV series Katie Morag has been awarded the broadcasting equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize at a glamorous ceremony in New York.

Katie Morag is based on the hugely popular series of books by Mairi Hedderwick. Picture: TSPL

Cherry Campbell, ten, who plays Katie in the CBeebies series, travelled to the US to accept the prestigious Peabody Award in Manhattan.

The US-based awards, celebrating their 75th anniversary this year, paid tribute to 30 of the best programmes of the year worldwide.

Among the winners were Wolf Hall, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, spy thriller Deutschland 83 and the Netflix movie Beasts of No Nation, while chat show hosts David Letterman and Jon Stewart won special achievement honours.

Katie Morag, produced by Highland-based independent TV company Move on Up, was the only children’s TV programme to win this year.

The Peabody board of judges said: “Mairi Hedderwick’s popular books about a feisty wee red headed girl, the splendid Cherry Campbell, and the Scottish island community she’s growing up in are exquisitely realised in this series.Timeless, perhaps old fashioned, but never precious or blindly idyllic, Katie Morag deals honestly and gracefully with death, loss, rivalry and other serious themes.”

Cherry was accompanied at Saturday night’s award ceremony by her parents Jill and David Campbell, lead writer Sergio Casci, director Don Coutts and executive producer Lindy Cameron.

Katie Morag is based on the hugely popular series of books by Mairi Hedderwick which relate the adventures of the feisty red-headed girl who lives with her family on the island of Struay.

The stories, filmed on the Isle of Lewis, celebrate community, the environment and the universal tensions and joys of family life.

Cherry, from Glasgow, was chosen from hundreds of girls who auditioned to play Katie when she was just seven years old. She impressed the casting team with her striking similarities to the character of Katie Morag, both in looks and personality.

She was the youngest-ever recipient of a Bafta for best performance for her role in the series, when she was aged nine.

The Peabody Awards were established in the 1940s, initially as a radio equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize.