The brief was simple enough: get a famous face to read a five-minute children’s story on CBeebies Bedtime Stories, lull a few thousand toddlers off to the land of nod, job done. The BBC never imagined that by hiring Tom Hardy – the 48-year-old brooding heart-throb who once terrorised Gotham as the masked villain Bane – they would accidentally create the steamiest, most addictive late-night television phenomenon since Bodyguard.

What was meant to soothe babies has instead become a nightly ritual for millions of sleep-deprived new mothers (and more than a few fathers, aunts and single women) who now refuse to go to bed until they’ve had their “Tom Hardy fix”.

The numbers are jaw-dropping. Since Hardy returned to the famous yellow CBeebies armchair in late November for a fresh week of stories, the iPlayer viewing figures have exploded past 14 million in the UK alone – with 68 per cent of those views coming after 10 p.m., long after the target audience of under-fives are (supposedly) asleep.

And the demographic data the BBC quietly released yesterday? Pure comedy gold. More than 4.2 million of those late-night viewers are women aged 25–39 – overwhelmingly new mums who are supposed to be using the precious minutes of peace to finally switch off. Instead, they’re huddled under duvets with phones on silent, hearts racing, replaying the same five-minute clip over and over again just to hear Hardy’s velvet-gravel voice murmur lines like “and the little bear curled up warm and safe…” in that unmistakable south-London-meets-Bane rumble.

One mum-of-two from Manchester told the Mail: “I actually set an alarm for 10:15 p.m. every night he’s on. My husband thinks I’m checking the baby monitor. I’m not. I’m listening to Tom Hardy read The Smeds and the Smoos like it’s an erotic audiobook. I have no shame.”

Another, a 34-year-old NHS midwife from Leeds, confessed: “After a 12-hour shift, the only thing that calms me down faster than a glass of wine is Tom in that armchair, wearing a cosy cardigan, stroking a stuffed sloth and saying ‘sleep tight, dream sweet’ in that voice. I’m basically asleep with a smile on my face and inappropriate thoughts in my head.”

The internet, predictably, has turned the entire thing into a full-blown cultural moment.

TikTok is flooded with “POV: You’re a new mum pretending to fold laundry while secretly watching Tom Hardy on CBeebies” videos – one has 28 million views and counting. Twitter/X has been renamed “Tom Hardy Bedtime Thirst Hour” every evening at 10 p.m., with the hashtag #CBeebiesAfterDark trending worldwide for nine straight nights. And the comments on the official CBeebies YouTube channel? Pure chaos.

“My baby is asleep. I am not. Thank you, Tom.”
“The BBC owes me a new pair of ovaries.”
“I don’t even have kids and I’m here every night. Send help.”
“That man could read the phone book and I’d still need a cigarette afterwards.”

Even the usually wholesome CBeebies Instagram account has been forced to get cheeky, posting a photo of Hardy cradling a picture book with the caption: “We’re aware some of you are staying up past your bedtime… we won’t tell if you don’t 😉.”

So how did we get here?

Hardy first appeared on CBeebies Bedtime Stories back in 2016 and 2017, reading classics like Hug Me and There’s a Bear on My Chair while his rescue dog Woodstock snored beside him. The clips went quietly viral among parents who whispered, “God, that voice…” and then moved on with their lives.

Fast-forward to 2025. The BBC, looking for a ratings boost during the bleak mid-winter lull, invited him back for a week of festive stories. They expected the usual wholesome bump. What they got was an avalanche.

The turning point came on night three, when Hardy read The Oak Tree by Julia Donaldson wearing a charcoal roll-neck sweater that hugged every inch of his famously jacked physique, voice dropping to a register so low it practically vibrated through phone speakers. Within 24 hours the clip had been viewed 11 million times on iPlayer, downloaded illegally across mummy WhatsApp groups, and set as alarm tones by women who suddenly didn’t mind waking up at 3 a.m. for feeds.

The BBC’s head of children’s content, Patricia Hidalgo, admitted yesterday: “We knew Tom was popular, but we genuinely thought the audience would be… children. The data has been eye-opening, to say the least.”

She wasn’t wrong.

A freedom-of-information request revealed internal emails from BBC executives with subject lines like “Why are 30-something women binge-watching CBeebies at 1 a.m.?” and “Can we monetise this somehow without traumatising actual toddlers?”

Meanwhile, Hardy himself remains delightfully oblivious – or at least pretends to be.

Speaking to Zoe Ball on Radio 2 this morning, he laughed: “I just thought I was helping some kids nod off! If it’s helping mums relax as well, that’s a bonus, innit? Though my missus did say, ‘You’re reading to the nation in your pyjamas again, aren’t you?’”

His wife, actress Charlotte Riley, has reportedly taken to hiding the remote control on the nights he’s on, joking to friends: “I’ve got three kids already – I don’t need the entire country trying to climb into bed with my husband.”

But the thirst is real, and it’s relentless.

A Mumsnet thread titled “Am I a bad mother if Tom Hardy’s voice is the only thing that gets me through the night?” has topped 4,000 replies – most of them variations of “No, you’re human.”

Sleep apps have reported a 41 per cent spike in downloads of Hardy’s stories, re-packaged (without permission) as “ASMR for grown-ups”. One enterprising fan even launched an Etsy store selling candles scented “Tom Hardy’s Cardigan” – notes of cashmere, cedarwood, and “dangerous levels of daddy energy”. They sold out in six hours.

Clinical psychologist Dr Sarah Jane-Lewis says the phenomenon is textbook: “Post-partum women are chronically under-stimulated in the sensory department and over-stimulated in the stress department. A deep, calm, authoritative male voice delivering gentle storytelling triggers the exact relaxation response that oxytocin and physical touch usually provide. Add in the fact that it’s Tom bloody Hardy looking like a sexy librarian who could bench-press you… biology does the rest.”

Celebrity reaction has been predictably unhinged.

Reese Witherspoon commented on the CBeebies Instagram: “Girl, same. My kids are teenagers and I’m still here.” Chris Hemsworth posted a shirtless selfie holding a children’s book with the caption: “BBC, call me.” And Cillian Murphy – Hardy’s Peaky Blinders co-star – simply wrote: “Mate, you’ve ruined bedtime for an entire generation of women. Well played.”

As for the BBC, they’re now in a delicious dilemma: do they lean into the chaos and give the people what they want – more Tom, more often, perhaps in slightly lower lighting and with fewer cartoon animals – or do they stick to their wholesome remit and risk a national mummy meltdown?

One thing is certain: tonight at 6.50 p.m., millions of British households will be performing the same covert ritual. Babies will be tucked in. Lights will be dimmed. Phones will be angled away from sleeping partners. And somewhere in a quiet BBC studio, Tom Hardy will lean into the microphone, flash that half-smile, and murmur, “Hello, I’m Tom… are you sitting comfortably?”

And across the country, an army of exhausted, besotted women will whisper back: “No, Tom. We really, really aren’t.”