Q: I keep seeing advertisements on social media for a documentary about the PBS Kids’ show “Wishbone.” Do you know when that is going to air locally on WQED?
— Josh, via email
Rob: As a big fan of the 1995-98 live-action PBS series, I’m glad Josh brought this documentary to my attention. I interviewed many of the people involved in the doc for a 2021 deep-dive on “Wishbone” after watching episodes with my kids during the pandemic — that my mother recorded on VHS tapes back in the ‘90s. But I hadn’t heard anything about this 88-minute film that will air on WQED-TV at 9 p.m. June 5 during a pledge period. (The film will also be available for rental and purchase on digital platforms beginning June 10.)
“What’s the Story, Wishbone?” is a love letter to the critically acclaimed children’s series made by the same people who created the show about a little dog with a big imagination. The doc is directed by Joey Stewart, who was first assistant director on “Wishbone,” and produced by Stewart, Betty Buckley (“Wishbone” producer), Larry Brantley (voice of Wishbone) and Stephanie Simpson (head writer on “Wishbone” who went on to write for “Arthur” and write and run “Octonauts”).
The film explores how “Wishbone” was created, from casting just the right Jack Russell terrier to building a town set to hiring an ensemble of actors to play characters from classic literature in Wishbone’s imagination.
Ambitious in its storytelling – each episode cut between a contemporary story featuring Wishbone and his human family and an abridged classic, from “Frankenstein” to “Romeo and Juliet” – “Wishbone” was produced independently in Texas and burned bright for just two seasons and a movie.
“What’s the Story, Wishbone?” gets into some of the politics of why the show ended (too expensive for its production company and PBS; PBS burned through episodes too quickly, not allowing time to fundraise for additional episodes), but largely avoids the current state of the property. Mattel owns “Wishbone,” which celebrated the 30th anniversary of its premiere in October 2025. The toy company announced development on a script for a “Wishbone” feature film in 2020, but so far, nothing has come of it.
In a Zoom interview this month, Brantley, Buckley and Stewart said the impetus for this documentary was a mix of satisfying viewers’ thirst for nostalgia, the cultural sway “Wishbone” still has and the friendships among cast and crew that have continued for three decades.
“The main thing all our fans and our friends, our family and other crew members that we worked with in other jobs wanted to talk about was ‘Wishbone,’” Stewart said. “They don’t want to talk about anything else. They were like, ‘Oh, you worked on “Wishbone”? Tell us about the dog, tell us about that.’ … It became apparent that fans weren’t ever going to let ‘Wishbone’ go and they wanted more and we knew we could tell the story that they wanted to hear.”
The film depicts Brantley, Wishbone’s human voice, on set adlibbing in time with the actions of Soccer, the dog who played Wishbone.
“That turned out to not only be good for [the production], but it turned out to be good for me, because far and away, with maybe the exception of the kids, I was the least experienced actor on that show,” Brantley said during the Zoom interview. “And I realized after that first table read that I needed to get better really quick, and the best way for me to do that was to surround myself with all these incredibly talented actors, many of whom went to school for this stuff.”
In our Zoom call, Buckley said “Wishbone” simply didn’t have enough time to find underwriters or sponsors and the company behind the show had signed a five-year deal with PBS, so they couldn’t move it to a platform with deeper pockets.
“I sat in a meeting at, I think it was Nickelodeon, that wanted [to pick up ‘Wishbone’] and we simply couldn’t set it up,” Buckley said, because at that point the show was contractually tied to PBS for at least two more years. “Instead of airing it every day, what if [episodes aired weekly] and we’d had 40 weeks, then we would have had that year to ramp it up. That’s really what pulled the plug, not being able to have that major donor, the Ken Burns-type sponsorship.”
The original “Wishbone” series never got a complete DVD release and it’s not available to stream, except on YouTube, where someone has helpfully posted all the episodes.
Q: What’s up with Comcast not having the NFL Network on its system anymore? I understand that there’s a contract dispute, but are there any more details on it and when the channel will return?
— Walter, via email
Rob: As with all carriage disputes, when a channel will return is unknowable until the two sides make a new deal.
NFL Network and NFL RedZone went dark on Comcast’s Xfinity systems on May 1. Disney/ESPN now controls negotiations on behalf of NFL Network, a change from past league-managed deals.
ESPN wants NFL Network included in basic programming packages, but Comcast wants to keep NFL Network on higher-cost tiers because of drops in viewership during the off-season, per Sports Business Journal.