Yonderland

Yonderland is a British family fantasy-comedy television series that was first broadcast in 2013 on Sky One. It was co-produced by Sky and Working Title Films, and is co-created, written by and stars the main performers from CBBC's hit series Horrible Histories.^[1]

Plot

33-year-old Debbie Maddox (Martha Howe-Douglas) is becoming increasingly bored with life as a suburban stay-at-home mum. Then one day an elf (voice of Mathew Baynton) appears from a portal in her cupboard insisting that she's the 'Chosen One' destined to save Yonderland, a magical land threatened by the evil Negatus (Simon Farnaby). Reluctantly, Debbie agrees to meet with the Elders of the realm... only to discover that they've lost the scroll that explains what the Chosen One is actually supposed to do. Yonderland, it turns out, is a very silly place indeed, and it will take all Debbie's resources to complete each week's quest in time to pick up the children from school.

Cast

• Martha Howe-Douglas as Debbie Maddox
• Dan Renton Skinner as Peter Maddox
• Mathew Baynton as the Elf/Chief Elder Choop
• Simon Farnaby as Negatus/Vice-Elder Flowers
• Laurence Rickard as Wizard Bradley/Scribe Elder Ho-Tan
• Jim Howick as the Crone/Lord Elder Pressley
• Ben Willbond as Nick the Stick/Wise Elder Vex

Production

On 22 March 2013, SkyOne's Lucy Lumsden announced Yonderland, saying: "We are delighted to give the incredibly talented Horrible Histories cast the opportunity to write and star in a brand new show for the whole family on Sky1." The show was co-produced by Working Title Films.^[2] Principal filming under former HH director Steve Connelly began the following May.

The show initially grew out of its six creators – Baynton, Farnaby, Howe-Douglas, Howick, Rickard, and Willbond – looking for a way to continue working together after Horrible Histories ceased production in 2012. Wanting to maintain the same uniquely costume-and-character-driven style and basic sketch-comedy framework, the new troupe quickly settled on the fantasy genre as the logical next step.^[3] At the same time, Baynton and Willbond had been developing a film idea about an ordinary person dragged into a parallel universe – specifically, a nostalgic fantasy adventure using puppetry rather than more modern animation techniques, in the vein of Labyrinth and The NeverEnding Story."^[4]

Adapting this concept to a TV series was a natural fit, since it easily lent itself to multiple different quests, using a wide variety of characters, costumes, and situations. The makeup of the troupe itself helped determine the casting of sole female Howe-Douglas as the central heroine, with her five male costars in multiple roles as the different characters she meets in each episode.^[5] In terms of writing together for the first time as a troupe, Howick noted to The Guardian that "[By now] we're such a tight unit, we know exactly what the humour is, and what the tone is." Baynton agreed: "It just grew very nicely out of what happens when the six of us are together in a room."^[6]

In keeping with the nostalgic, "lo-fi" tone – and in the interest of creating a more richly populated, inventive and potentially surprising world – Yonderland features numerous Muppet-style puppet characters designed and built by longtime Jim Henson associates Baker Coogan.^[7][8] Explaining the decision to keep computer animation to a minimum (save for the portal to Yonderland itself), Rickard said: "Because you can make everything photo-realistic these days, it kind of takes the joy out of it. Even if it's brilliant CGI, you still know it's CGI ... you know it's not there, it's not tangible, and it's the same with comedy."^[9]

The first series was considered a critical and popular success, earning solid ratings for its timeslot.^[10] However, as of early 2014 no word on a second series has been released.

Episodes

Reception

Yonderland met with generally positive reviews, most focussing on its uniquely all-ages nature and nostalgic callbacks to former fantasy classics. Writing in the Guardian, Sarah Hughes called the series "perfect family viewing", summing it up as "both supremely silly and very clever indeed – the sort of frothy concoction that looks effortless but is actually very hard to get right... the writing is a wonderful mix of knowing and daft",^[12] all of which earned it 16th place in the same paper's ranking of the Top 30 TV shows of 2013.^[13] Den of Geek's Rob Smedley called the show "joyously amusing... the clichés are magnificently well handled or hidden by some top gags and a cast who know just how to deliver them."^[14]

The Radio Times named the show #28 in its own Top 40 year-end list, saying further of the show's writer/creators that "Characters tended to appear once when they could each have had their own series; this gang have so many ideas and such skill in executing them that, in the long term, Python comparisons might not be out of place."^[15] Total Film magazine placed it at #25 in their Top 25 year-end list, agreeing that "It’s basically Labyrinth meets Monty Python. Yes, it’s THAT good. Though it’s essentially aimed at the kiddies, like all the best muppet-y stories, there are jokes for the adults, too."^[16] Entertainment website Cultbox UK named it their Best Comedy of the same year, "simply by virtue of being a genuinely funny comedy that the whole family can watch together... There's something for everyone in the Horrible Histories team's madcap fantasy-ribbing recipe of puppets, inventive characters, more puppets, and cheeky humour."^[17]

References

External links

• Yonderland at the Internet Movie Database
• Yonderland at the British Comedy Guide