Izzy wizzy, let's get politically correct. Britain's favourite yellow glove puppet bear Sooty is back, but this time he will be armed with a laudable sense of gender equality as well as modern accoutrements such as an iPod and a laptop.

A new 26-part series of Sooty is being filmed for ITV for broadcast at the end of this year and some modern tweaks have been introduced to update the 60-year-old character.

Sooty's close friend Soo, a normally shy and retiring panda – who has traditionally been depicted with a pinny and a duster – will no longer attend to the housework and domestic needs of Sooty and his friend Sweep, a dog characterised by a high-pitched squeak.

Instead, she spends her hours surfing and playing Frisbee with her male friends and is at the heart of the action, which now takes place on a holiday camp with new puppeteer Richard Cadell taking the role as the caretaker.

"She is in many ways a modern Soo," said Cadell, who was handed control of the puppet in 1998 from Matthew, the son of Sooty's creator, Harry Corbett. "She will be at the heart of the action and doing things a lot more than she has before."

Jamila Metran, the programme manager for CiTV, which will air the series, added: "Soo is not doing the housework any more and she's not the Mumsy character taking care of the two boys – they have a much more equal role. The look is much more modern and while we love the old Sooty, the experience will be a modern one, which we think children will relate to more and find fun."

Sooty's essentially naughty but sweet character remains and he continues to be mute to the audience, communicating only by whispering into the ear of his operator. He will keep his xylophone, water pistol, wand and the catchphrase "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy".

But he too has been given a subtle modern makeover in the new series, which will air on CiTV this autumn with a repeat on ITV at weekends next year.

Most of the scenes will take place outside, and Sooty now has a range of hobbies including working out, football, high diving and go-kart racing. All three of the main characters will have laptops and iPods and play computer games.

Cadell has the blessing of Matthew Corbett, whose father, Harry, bought the puppet for his son from a stall on a holiday in Blackpool in 1948. "Richard is as close to a Corbett as you can get, and if my father saw this now he would be tickled pink," said Matthew, who was given control of Sooty in the mid 1970s by his father.

The original bear was given soot marks on his face to make him show up better on black and white televisions when he made his small-screen debut on the BBC in 1952 on the BBC's Talent Night.

After that, Sooty and Sweep became regulars on the BBC children's show Saturday Special from 1952 to 1955.

After ITV decommissioned the series in 2005, Cadell bought the rights from HiT for a sum reputed to be in the region of £1m and finally won a commission for new episodes to be filmed by ITV.

"The key to Sooty is simplicity, and we're not going to try and complicate it with over-production and special effects," he said. "He's a puppet and there's a great tradition there, but you can still do so much with him.

"If I hadn't bought him, the old fellow would have been consigned to history, and that would have been terrible."