Does Anyone Remember Wishbone?

hello welcome back to my channel my name is carly stevens i'm the author of the tanya academy series and this is english nerd [Music] so today i wanted to talk about wishbone [Music] i'm wondering how many people out there actually remember wishbone it was a pbs kids show that ran from 1995 to 1997. there were 50 episodes and so just you know a little bit of background about um wishbone it's the story of a jack russell terrier named wishbone who looks like this with a little paw on his ear and he's apparently a very well read dog because he considers every one of his normal day-to-day activities as kind of a reflection of of a great work that he's read so the show switches back and forth between the 90s and his actual family and then he stars in all of these abridged adaptations of great works of literature like tom sawyer or the odyssey or treasure island or what have you and so it's this really cute show that i feel like too few people know about at this point so apparently when it was first thought of it was just somebody wanted to write a kids show from a dog's point of view and then when he saw a series of masterpieces classics on his shelf it sort of clicked that he would have this be kind of an educational show that introduced kids to great literature and introduced me to great literature as well i remember being in high school and um we were about to read a tale of two cities or the odyssey or one of one of those and and um the teacher asked you know have you heard the the plot of this do you know anything about it and i'm nodding sagely and then leaning over to a friend and saying wishbone and they just went so i i had learned all the plots of these these great works through through wishbone so the creator decided to do some auditions for the voice of the dog the dog's mouth doesn't move or anything during the show but he's narrated by a man named larry brantley who came in for his audition and apparently there was a dog at the audition and he just had to do a voice for the dog as he was playing with this tennis ball and that's how he got the the role he didn't know much about the show at all which i think is is kind of funny but it ran for two seasons and it ended up winning like four daytime emmy awards which i think it deserved i remember really liking the show and uh thinking that it was really creative and and uh cute and i've learned a lot of a lot of stuff um but yeah so that's the that's the background it was re not rebooted but it was on pbs a short while uh for a short while in like 2006 or something but now i believe the only place that you can find the episodes is on youtube there there are one or two channels that have all the episodes and i'm planning on eventually going back and maybe watching some of those when i was in i don't know elementary junior high we had a vhs of the prince and the popper one but now they're all available it looks like out there in the world i wish that the show had run longer but it was shut down allegedly because it didn't have merchandising potential which i feel is untrue because i not only have this amazing sherlock holmes wishbone but i also have this there was a book series or two that that spawned from the wishbone series this is the only book that i have but i think i heard that there are about 50 books this particular series has quite a few titles as you can see the books are kind of hilarious if you look at the they have illustrations that books go back and forth between his normal life and great literature as well and so wishbone is playing charles darnay here there he is on trial it's just it's so cute and weird here's charles darnay coming into um i don't know if it's beauvail or paris but i mean look he's just he's just a happy jack russell terrier the horse looks more concerned than he does about this angry mob that's that's out to get him and i like how how he has to be riding with someone else because he doesn't actually have the means to hold the reins for himself even though in some of these stories he's you know the love interest or or what have you he's played cyrano de bergerac it's just so cute so i have this and i don't even know where these came from maybe the mail these stickers as well look at him dressed up as all these things there he says romeo there he is his robin hood it's just it's magnificent it's what it is so no merchandising potential oh contraire so the characters the characters in this show we have not only wishbone who is of course the main character in everything um but we also have his owner joe talbot who is a 12 year old boy who lives in texas with his uh with his mother it's a single mother his father died i believe her name is ellen and joe wears just an ungodly amount of layers you know 90s style so that's where i wore this um this flannel because it's it's kind of joe-ish i would just need a jacket over it but it's kind of hot so i'm not going to do that so he wears all these layers and has all these adventures with his two friends his two best friends um david and samantha so they they babysit and they plant trees and there's one where i think it's sam samantha who gets stuck in this fire and it's it's a whole it's a whole thing that was a very exciting episode but wishbone witnesses all of this and then thinks about the stories that might that it might correlate to and then there's a whole cast that just does the literature stories and it's the same people just playing different roles so you always see the same actors and then they'll you know one week they'll be madame de farge and uh the next week they'll be you know part of a you know in a wedding or whatever so it's it's basically just just the cutest and i wish more people knew about this uh wishbone but yeah when i first when i first got this my sister got it for me and for that i am very grateful my students were too young to know who wishbone was and most of the teachers were either too young or too old to know who wishbone was it was like only people in their 30s who had any idea what i was talking about so i'm gonna try to revive the adorable show about classic literature so that's it this is just kind of a psa for anybody who doesn't already know about wishbone do you think it's worth it [Music] the pbs show that ran from 1995 to 1997. so that's that's that's it if you like wishbone i would love to hear about it so we can actually you know be friends bond over this um that's it like this video if you like it don't forget to subscribe for more english nerdy goodness and i will see you next week bye

Channel: English Nerd

Views: 100

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: english nerd, wishbone show, wishbone pbs, what's the story wishbone, wishbone theme song, abs kids shows, 90's kids shows, wishbone dog

Id: dDwy_nNPDBs

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021