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Yonderland is a British sitcom television series that was broadcast on Sky One from November 2013 to December 2016. It was produced by Sioned Wiliam, and was created by, written by and starred Them There from CBBC's series Horrible Histories.
The show initially grew out of the desire of its creators (Baynton, Farnaby, Howe-Douglas, Howick, Rickard and Willbond) to continue working together after Horrible Histories ceased production in 2012. The new standalone troupe wanted to maintain the sketch-based, character-driven comedy style from their previous series. They quickly settled on the fantasy quest genre, with its emphasis on individual short vignettes within the larger plot, as the logical next step.
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." This concept in turn naturally lent itself to the casting of sole female troupe member Howe-Douglas as the central heroine, with her five male costars in multiple roles as the different characters she meets in each episode. In terms of writing together for the first time as a troupe, Howick noted to The Guardian that "By 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."
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, Lifecast and Fiona Cazaly. The final series, which also featured an extra long Christmas episode had a plethora of new puppet characters designed and built by a team headed by Fiona Cazaly, including puppet makers at Darryl Worbey Studio, Chris Barlow, Andy Heath, Iestin Evans, Natalie Ellnor and puppet costumes by David Brown. 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."
The first series was considered a critical and popular success, earning solid ratings for its timeslot. On 30 June 2014, Sky announced that the show had been recommissioned for a second series, which was filmed in autumn of the same year and began airing in July 2015.
In January 2016 it was announced that Stephen Fry would be joining the cast of Yonderland, for the third series, as "Cuddly Dick", described in the Radio Times as "a mysterious returning elder". Series 3 began broadcasting in October 2016 on Sky1.
In February 2017 it was announced that the third series would be the last and the show had been cancelled.
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, Monty Python comparisons might not be out of place." 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." 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."
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