Yonderland premiered on Sky One on 10th November 2013, and told the story of a stay-at-home mum named Debbie (Martha Howe-Douglas), who discovers she is actually the saviour of a faraway realm.<\/p>\n
The titular place is utterly unpredictable, governed by a council of dim-witted Elders and populated by a diverse range of species and communities, each one more surreal than the last.<\/p>\n
To mark the launch of the official Ghosts tie-in book \u2013 The Button House Archives<\/a> \u2013 RadioTimes.com<\/a> asked co-creators Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick and Mathew Baynton to share memories and lessons from their earlier project.<\/p>\n Check out the video above for everything they had to say about Yonderland or read on for the highlights.<\/p> It should come as no surprise to Yonderland fans that Howick\u2019s favourite character to play was The Crone, a hilarious figure known for her screeching tone and outlandish statements.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Crone is probably the standout memory simply because she features in every series, and I think her part sort of grew,\u201d he began. \u201cHer part was very much a story beat in episode one, which then became this kind of running joke.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved playing her. I absolutely loved it, it was really fun. Of all the characters in Yonderland, her and the Elder were the only two I kept coming back to.\u201d<\/p>\n Baynton went on to reveal that, in its early stages of development, Ghosts<\/a> was poised to be a similar show to Yonderland, with each member of the group playing several characters in a far busier Button House.<\/p>\n He explained: \u201cI don\u2019t think Ghosts could have been written before Yonderland \u2013 or certainly it wouldn\u2019t have come out the same.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went into Ghosts having done Yonderland with the same multi-character mindset, thinking, \u2018We\u2019re going to play lots of characters.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cSo Ghosts, when we wrote the pilot, was a house full of ghosts [and] we were going to play all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n The writers later concluded that the premise would work better with a smaller group of characters, who had no choice but to socialise with one another \u2013 or else they\u2019d be completely alone.<\/p>\n Baynton continued: \u201cWe looked at it and we went, \u2018Hang on: this is about being stuck with people. And if you\u2019re in a community of 100, it\u2019s like school \u2013 you can avoid that clique and hang out with these people that are your like minds.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you\u2019re not really stuck if there\u2019s that many people to kind of choose from. It\u2019s a different thing. So we eschewed all of that and stuck to these characters, this small ensemble because that felt right for that show.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cI\u2019m still really fond of Yonderland. I see bits of it now and I cannot believe that they put it on telly. It\u2019s so chaotic.\u201d<\/p>\n Martha Howe-Douglas capped off our retrospective with a surprising revelation \u2013 she almost played Alison in Ghosts<\/a>!<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, personally, the transition from Yonderland to Ghosts was that I got back into playing \u2018character\u2019 because, obviously, in Yonderland I was the sort of Alison character,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd, because we did three years of that, that kind of felt like my natural\u2026 that\u2019s where I felt most at home at that point, which is crazy because we started on Horrible Histories, where we were playing all these mad characters.\u201d<\/p>\n Howe-Douglas added: \u201cSo when we were doing Ghosts and we were writing it, I was thinking, \u2018Should I just be the Alison character?\u2019 And the guys were like, \u2018No, you have to be a character, you have to come back and play with us.’\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, she went on to portray the legendary Lady Fanny Button \u2013 \u201cand we all know how that ended up: ridiculously extreme, but so much fun!\u201d<\/p>\n Ghosts seasons 1-5 are available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Comedy<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what\u2019s on.<\/strong><\/p>\n Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only \u00a310 \u2013\u00a0<\/b>subscribe now<\/a><\/b> and celebrate the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who with a special issue of Radio Times. <\/b>For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to\u00a0<\/b>The Radio Times Podcast<\/a><\/b>.<\/b><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n As the Sky comedy turns 10, we asked the creators to look back on their warped fantasy series. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":39465,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-stars-on-yonderland-i-cant-believe-that-they-put-it-on-tv.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-stars-on-yonderland-i-cant-believe-that-they-put-it-on-tv-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-stars-on-yonderland-i-cant-believe-that-they-put-it-on-tv-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-stars-on-yonderland-i-cant-believe-that-they-put-it-on-tv.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-stars-on-yonderland-i-cant-believe-that-they-put-it-on-tv.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-stars-on-yonderland-i-cant-believe-that-they-put-it-on-tv.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-stars-on-yonderland-i-cant-believe-that-they-put-it-on-tv.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"As the Sky comedy turns 10, we asked the creators to look back on their warped fantasy series.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/39464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Debbie](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/11\/yonderland-f02a08a.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"yonderland\\"\/")
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