Empire_Australasia_-_February_2017

IF YOU HAVEN’T seen Yonderland, the

fantasy-tinged sitcom from the original Horrible

Histories gang, you’re missing one of the most

inventive, surreal and hilarious TV comedies of

recent years. Still not convinced? Think of it as

Monty Python meets Labyrinth. We asked its six

creators/writers/stars to pick their favourite

moments from its three series to date.

‘THE INTERROGATION’ (S1, E3)

CHOSEN BY MATHEW BAYNTON

“As bounty hunters interrogating the monks

who cannot lie, me and Jim Howick decided we

wanted to both be made up like Dennis Hopper

in Easy Rider. Their dialogue was threatening

but we started imagining their backstory and

they became a couple with a long history. We

were really excited to get to set and see how the

others responded to it. That’s the great fun of

working in a gang — we get to ill every tiny role

with detail that, for us, makes every scene a

chance to have fun and make each other laugh.”

‘THE KRAFTWERK PARODY’ (S2, E6)

CHOSEN BY JIM HOWICK

“We were always very aware of how popular the

songs in Horrible Histories were, so when we

started making Yonderland it was a no-brainer that

the show should have a musical element of some

kind. In this episode we wanted to create a fantasy

version of state security that Debbie (disguised as

a crone) comes face-to-face with as she tries to

cross a border checkpoint. We really liked the idea

of the guards having monotone accents and

applying painfully careful examinations. Four

guards in a row? Fastidiously groomed in

Stasi-like uniforms? The perfect opportunity for a

Kraftwerk parody. You’ve got to take those. So we

wrote a song loosely based on their hit The

Robots, and Philip Pope composed the music. It’s

safe to say we indulged ourselves. A lot.”

‘THE SUPERHERO SPOOF’ (S3, E3)

CHOSEN BY BEN WILLBOND

“We’d started to talk about superheroes and

really wanted to get them into Yonderland, but it’s

hard to do because the series is getting really

story-heavy. We came up with this concept of

a vigilante called The Bird [Baynton]. I just really

wanted to do an opening where it would start

in a brooding Batman style on a rooftop and then

there’s a guy at the window going, “Seriously,

mate, what are you doing?” I was massively

sleep-deprived at the time with my second child,

hence the guy has got loads of babies. Larry said,

“Why isn’t he just a creature?” So we came up with

a dog who had loads of babies, the worst-case

scenario. The payoff of the roof being at loor

height is one of my favourite comic beats.”

‘THE CAKE WAR’ (S3, E4)

CHOSEN BY MARTHA HOWE-DOUGLAS

“Basically, this is our take on The Great British

Bake Off, with three of the boys — Jim, Ben and

Larry — dressed up as WI-type women. They

each think the other has sabotaged their cake

efforts, and basically start a full-on war. It’s

ridiculous. We’re in trenches and iring machine

guns and grenades at each other, and it’s utterly

ridiculous. I was absolutely pissing myself. The

amount of takes we had to do... it took so long

to ilm because I couldn’t keep a straight face.”

‘THE QGM’ (S2, E5)

CHOSEN BY SIMON FARNABY

“This was actually a touchstone idea we’d had

when we were creating the show, to have an AGM

— the Quillenial General Meeting — for evil

overlords. Like people who work for Nokia have

at a Radisson, but for baddies. I had been Negatus

the evil overlord since Series 1, but now the others

had free rein to design their own. For example,

Matt made a ludicrous choice to have Don

Corleone-style cotton wool in his mouth, which he

instantly regretted. I think you can tell a lot about

someone from the type of baddy they’d like to be.”

‘THE CHAMBER BREAK-IN’ (S3, E2)

CHOSEN BY LAURENCE RICKARD

“As a ilm nut, writing an Ocean’s Eleven-style

heist was a complete joy. It starts with a

tremendously silly joke, as three armed guards

with unlikely names greet each other (“Michael”/

“Douglas”/“Kirk”/“Douglas”), and then cuts to

one of my favourite Jim Howick performances,

as he acts out his own horriic death, in far too

much detail. I’ll never forget the amount of

corpsing when shooting that. Even in the cut,

you can see how close our faces are to cracking.”

YONDERLAND SCREENS ON ABC; SERIES 1 IS OUT NOW

ON DVD AND BLU-RAY.

By the people who make it

SIX REASONS

TO WATCH

YONDERLAND

The SFX budget was

way down for the

new season of

Game Of Thrones.

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT