by Declan Hertel
Freelancer
The urge to gush about how much I love this show is one I must repress. If you have ever enjoyed a cartoon in your life, you owe it to yourself to seek out and watch Patrick McHale’s “Over the Garden Wall,” a 10-episode miniseries that aired on Cartoon Network earlier this month.
A deceptively simple tale of two brothers trying to find their way home after stumbling into The Unknown, the series strikes an excellent balance of childish (and adorable) slapstick comedy, old folk tales and a deep sense of dread and uncertainty.
All the performances are spot on. Elijah Wood (“The Lord of the Rings”) very effectively plays the older brother Wirt, a young man stuck between his sensitive, artistic nature and the realities of the world.
The younger brother Greg, played by Collin Dean (“Hotel Transylvania”), is a perpetually optimistic goofball whose nonsensical songs and interactions with his never-really-named frog will bring a smile to even the most heartless of viewers.
The brothers join up with a bluebird named Beatrice (Melanie Lynskey, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”), an angsty teenage bluebird with a serious attitude who claims she can get them home.
Christopher Lloyd (“Back to the Future”) plays the delightfully creepy Woodsman, and John Cleese (“Monty Python”) plays an eccentric aristocrat with a ghostly paramour.
Speaking of creepy, this show is seriously unsettling at times. Where some episodes are lighthearted affairs, others are very dark and even scary.
The show never struggles with these mood changes, often jumping back and forth between them multiple times. They use their characters to this effect well, ping-ponging between threatening and amiable from moment to moment.
These moments of dread and fear are perfectly balanced with the moments of heartwarming and silliness mostly provided by Greg with his optimism and gung-ho approach to the world, not to mention the candy in his pants.
This is to the credit of the writers and animators, who have created a plethora of strange characters to populate their world.
The series is dripping with a distinct early-20th century Americana aesthetic that will make you long for a time and place that never really was.
The muted autumn color palette gives the show its folk-tale feeling, and all the characters are costumed in archaic garb.
This story feels like one that could have been pulled out of an old children’s book.
The music is phenomenal, from polka to sweet piano tunes, and further establishes this fully formed and delightful universe the characters inhabit.
“Over the Garden Wall” is absolutely worth the entire hour-thirty it takes to watch the whole series.
While I’d very much like to visit The Unknown again, the length and content of this miniseries was perfect.
After watching the complete series three times, I assure you that it gets better each time.
“Over the Garden Wall” is a wonderful tale that will stick with you after its all-too-brief runtime, and make you wish for more.
