Before streaming algorithms curated your entertainment, before tablets replaced Saturday morning cartoons, a small Jack Russell Terrier with a patch over one eye sat down in a red armchair and introduced an entire generation to Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, and Poe. Wishbone was unlike anything children’s television had attempted before or since. And now, thirty years after that little dog first bounded across PBS screens, the story behind the show is finally being told.
What’s the Story, Wishbone?, presented by Novel Tails in association with Loud Pictures, is a feature-length documentary that goes behind the scenes of one of the most ambitious, beloved, and improbably successful children’s programs ever made. It debuts on Public Television Stations from May 27 through June 9, 2026, before becoming available to rent or buy digitally across North America on June 10, 2026. A Blu-ray release is planned for late 2026.
Thirty years on, Wishbone is finally getting his own story told. And it’s a good one.
About the Documentary
Directed by Joey Stewart, who served as first assistant director on the original series, What’s the Story, Wishbone? is very much a labor of love from people who were there. The film is presented by Novel Tails, a production company founded by members of the original cast and crew, and it shows. This isn’t an outside observer’s take on a nostalgic property. It’s a reunion, a reckoning, and a celebration all at once.
The documentary features the writers, cast, and the voice of Wishbone, alongside the creators behind the show, exploring the ambition, chaos, and lasting impact of one of the most unique children’s series ever made. Through rare archival footage and new interviews, the film uncovers the unlikely and surprisingly heartfelt story of how a scrappy public television production became a cultural touchstone for millions of kids.
Among those sharing their stories is Larry Brantley, the voice of Wishbone himself, who has spent thirty years being asked what it was like to work on the show. “For most of my professional life, I have been asked the question, ‘What was it like working on Wishbone?’ After 30 years, I can finally say, ‘Watch this film!'” he shares. Producer Betty Buckley adds that revisiting the series and reflecting on how it inspired a love of reading in children is something she’s incredibly excited to share with audiences.
Comedian and writer Mo Rocca, who got his start on the original series, also appears. Rocca described writing for the show as “storytelling boot camp,” noting that the job required adapting classic literature into half-hour episodes with a dog in the lead role. That’s not hyperbole. The production constraints of Wishbone were genuinely extraordinary, and the documentary digs into exactly how the team pulled it off.
Director Joey Stewart says: “On the 30th anniversary of Wishbone, I’m excited to pull back the curtain on how this little show became a real cultural phenomenon. I made this film to celebrate its impact and reconnect the audiences who grew up with it in a meaningful way.”
For anyone who ran home from school to catch an episode, or who discovered Homer’s Odyssey through the imagination of a Jack Russell Terrier, this documentary is a gift. For everyone else, it’s an introduction to something genuinely special.
The Wishbone Franchise: A Deep Dive
Origins: Where the Idea Came From
Wishbone began with a creator, a library, and a dog.
Show creator and executive producer Rick Duffield had long been intrigued by the concept of telling kids stories from the point of view of a dog. As he told The New Yorker: “I had gotten into the habit of giving voice to my own dog’s expressions and exploits around the house. One afternoon, as I struggled to convert that impulse into a show, I gazed at the row of books on my credenza. The one that caught my eye that day was Frank Magill’s Masterpieces of World Literature. Well, what if a little dog with a big imagination could take us into some of the greatest stories ever told? And, why not make him the hero?”
That spark became a pitch. Lyrick pitched the show to PBS executives Alice Kahn and Kathy Quattrone, and before the first five episodes were even complete, PBS ordered a full 40-episode first season from Big Feats Entertainment, a division of Lyrick. The team was, in Duffield’s words, “basically shooting two different shows at once.”
Wishbone was produced by Big Feats! Entertainment, a division of Lyrick Studios, the same company behind Barney & Friends. Each episode of Wishbone cost around $500,000 to produce, with almost all of the budget excluding a $1 million license fee from PBS provided out of pocket by Richard Leach, subsidized by the success of Barney & Friends.
The Star: Soccer the Dog
Every great show needs a great lead. Wishbone found one in a Los Angeles-based Jack Russell Terrier named Soccer.
In the summer of 1993, Duffield spent three days casting for the dog star at a motel courtyard in Valencia, California, looking at between 100 and 150 dogs. Soccer stood out immediately. During the 1994 casting call, Soccer did a backflip that bowled over the producers. His owner, Jackie Kaplan, was a seasoned dog trainer who had also coached the Dobermans that chase Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies.
Soccer did the bulk of the screen work, but three other Jack Russell Terriers named Phoebe, Slugger, and Shiner handled the stunts, and a fifth dog named Bear was used exclusively for publicity stills. Soccer’s costumes were designed by Stephen M. Chudej, who won an Emmy Award in 1996. The dog reportedly did not mind wearing the costumes, though occasionally a hat would throw him off balance when he jumped.
Between seasons, Soccer became a genuine celebrity. Soccer the Dog made promotional appearances at shopping malls across the United States, greeting fans from a red armchair. According to Mental Floss, the dog traveled first class, stayed in four-star hotels, and had his own security detail; handlers reportedly gave Soccer the codename “The President.”
Soccer passed away in 2001 at age 13. His presence in the new documentary is carried through archival footage, which is no small gift.
The Voice: Larry Brantley
Soccer brought Wishbone to life on screen, but Larry Brantley gave him his soul.
Brantley, who was 24 at the time of his audition, didn’t perform a prepared piece to land the role. During a callback, Soccer was given a break and his trainer pulled out a tennis ball for the dog to play with. Brantley spontaneously began verbalizing what must have been going through the dog’s head as Soccer played catch with himself. It went on for two minutes. When he asked if the producers were ready, producer Betty Buckley told him: “Oh no, that was the audition.”
Brantley was cast following “a five-minute impromptu audition” in which he imagined Wishbone’s thoughts as Soccer “was obsessing, like, over this tennis ball.” He worked six days a week throughout production: reading Wishbone’s lines on set as Soccer acted out each scene, then returning to the recording studio on Saturdays to lay down the final dialogue.
Brantley appeared in voice only throughout the entire run, with one exception. In the episode “Rushin’ to the Bone,” Brantley has a brief cameo as an actor named Larry Brinkley, who is dubbing for Wishbone as he shoots a dog food commercial involving a fake Scottish castle and period garb.
The Format: How the Show Actually Worked
The structure of Wishbone was deceptively elegant and fiendishly difficult to execute.
Each episode consisted of an opening scene introducing a contemporary plot in Wishbone’s hometown of Oakdale. Something about the situation reminds Wishbone of a famous work of literature, which he introduces to the viewer. The episode then cuts between an adaptation of that work, usually with Wishbone portraying the main character, and the contemporary plot, with the two storylines running in parallel.
In the literary fantasy sequences, the producers created a repertory company of local stage actors, dubbed The Wishbone Players, to populate the historical settings. The actors from the Oakdale scenes never appeared in the fantasy sequences.
The ambition required to pull this off on a television schedule was significant. The series ran on a tight production schedule, with episodes scripted and shot in the span of a week. On top of the time constraints, filmmakers had to deal with an ambitious concept that required a new historical set every episode and an animal actor as the star. As Larry Brantley says in the documentary trailer: “We all had the same question, which was, ‘How are we going to do this?'”
The last two minutes of nearly every episode featured a behind-the-scenes segment called “Tail Ends,” narrated by Wishbone and focusing on a production department whose work was particularly prominent in the episode, such as lighting for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” or makeup for Frankenstein. It was an early, child-friendly introduction to how television is actually made, and kids loved it.
One beloved detail: the episode titles were always dog-themed puns on the featured book. “The Pawloined Paper” for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. “The Hunchdog of Notre Dame.” “Furst Impressions” for Pride and Prejudice. “Paw Prints of Thieves.” The creativity of the writing team extended right to the episode titles.
The Books: Classic Literature Through a Dog’s Eyes
Wishbone didn’t condescend to its young audience, and it didn’t sanitize the source material. This was one of its most radical and most praised qualities.
The adapted stories were notable for staying faithful to the source material and not toning down their subject matter, including murder, execution, suicide, and the effects of slavery. Though the series was meant for children, thousands of letters were received from college students and parents saying how much they enjoyed the show.
The library Wishbone drew from was genuinely vast. Across 50 episodes, the show tackled Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s works, Don Quixote, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Ivanhoe, A Tale of Two Cities, The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Joan of Arc, The Aeneid, and dozens more. Occasionally Wishbone would play a secondary character if the lead role was female, such as playing Louis de Conte in Joan of Arc, or difficult to relate to, such as Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.
For many millennials, Wishbone was genuinely their first exposure to these stories. Not a simplified retelling. Not a cartoon approximation. A faithful, dramatically serious adaptation that happened to star a small dog in period costume. It worked. Teachers noticed. Librarians recommended the show. Kids picked up the books.
The Production: Where It Was Made
Wishbone was a Texas production through and through.
The interior scenes were filmed at Big Feats! Entertainment, a subsidiary of Lyrick Studios, housed in a 50,000-square-foot warehouse located in Plano, Texas, while the exterior scenes were filmed on Lyrick Studios’ 10-acre backlot in Allen, Texas. The fictional town of Oakdale felt unmistakably Texan, and the show never reached for the coastal cultural signifiers that dominated much of television at the time.
For all of Season 1, the music was performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. While they were recording the music, the performers had no idea what the music would be used for. Imagine the Dallas Symphony’s reaction upon discovering they had scored a show about a literary-minded Jack Russell Terrier. Television is full of strange and wonderful stories, and this is one of them.
Famous Faces: Early Roles You Didn’t Know About
Wishbone launched careers before those careers had names.
Future Supernatural star Jensen Ackles made his television debut in the episode “¡Viva Wishbone!”, playing Michael Duss, a preppy teen with a knack for mechanical things. Years before Dean Winchester ever slid behind the wheel of the Impala, Ackles was getting his first screen credit from a dog show about classic literature on PBS.
Amy Acker, later known for Angel and Dollhouse, appeared in the book fantasy sequences of three different episodes, taking on literary roles including Catherine Morland from Northanger Abbey, Priscilla Mullins from The Courtship of Miles Standish, and even Venus from The Aeneid.
And Mo Rocca, now known as a humorist and television personality, was one of the writers in the trenches in 1995, learning his craft by figuring out how to squeeze The Odyssey into thirty minutes with a terrier as Odysseus.
Awards and Legacy
Wishbone won television’s highest achievements during its run. The series earned a Peabody Award as well as multiple Emmy Awards, and built a loyal fanbase around the globe. It was placed on the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences First Honor Roll of Children’s Programming in 1999.
Despite its acclaim, the show ended after just 50 episodes. PBS halted production because the show did not have “merchandising potential.” By any cultural measure, that decision has not aged well. The show that was deemed insufficiently commercial is the one that people are still talking about three decades later and making documentaries to celebrate.
The Extended Universe: Books, a TV Movie, and What Comes Next
The Wishbone franchise extended well beyond the television series.
The show inspired a companion book series, The Adventures of Wishbone, which retold classic literary stories in novel form with Wishbone as the protagonist. A spinoff mystery series called The Wishbone Mysteries followed, aimed at slightly older readers who wanted more of the Oakdale gang solving real-world cases with literary flair.
The series was followed by a 95-minute television film, Wishbone’s Dog Days of the West, which aired on PBS stations on March 13, 1998. The movie returned the gang to a Western setting and gave the franchise a proper send-off.
The show aired internationally across numerous countries, including on Nickelodeon in the UK and Ireland, the Nine Network in Australia, and YTV in Canada.
As for what comes next: a film adaptation of the series from Universal Pictures and Mattel Films is currently in development, with Peter Farrelly serving as producer. The announcement generated both excitement and mixed reactions from longtime fans who had hoped the original team would be involved. The documentary arrives at a fascinating moment for the franchise: Wishbone is simultaneously being celebrated and potentially reimagined, and the question of who gets to tell that story next is very much alive.
Why It Still Matters
Wishbone aired for two seasons. It produced 50 episodes. It starred a dog. By every conventional measure of television staying power, it should have faded long ago.
It didn’t.
For many of us, Wishbone wasn’t just television. He was our first Shakespeare, our first mystery, our first time seeing ourselves inside a story. That’s an extraordinary thing for any show to accomplish, and Wishbone did it with the unlikely combination of a Jack Russell Terrier, a team of passionate young creatives, a 50,000-square-foot warehouse in Texas, and the entire canon of Western literature.
What’s the Story, Wishbone? is the documentary that generation has been waiting for. Funny, nostalgic, and deeply human, it celebrates not just the show but the people who made it and the children it shaped.
Thirty years later, the little dog with the big imagination still has something to say.
And we’re still listening.
What’s the Story, Wishbone? debuts on Public Television Stations May 27 through June 9, 2026, and is available digitally from June 10, 2026. Find it at whatsthestorywishbone.com.
Did Wishbone introduce you to your favorite book? Let us know in the comments.
