Over the Garden Wall

**Over the Garden Wall** is an American animated television miniseries created by Patrick McHale for Cartoon Network.

The entire miniseries was made available on september 1.

## **Premise**

**Over the Garden Wall** is about two half-brothers, Wirt and Greg who become lost in a strange forest called the Unknown. To find their way home, the two must travel across the seemingly supernatural forest.with the occasional help of the Woodsman and Beatrice.

## **Official 'HBO Max' Description**

> "*On an adventure, brothers Wirt and Greg get lost in the unknown, a strange forest adrift in time; as they attempt to find a way out of the Unknown, they cross paths with a mysterious old woodsman and a bluebird named Beatrice.*."
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## **Cast**

* Elijah Wood as Wirt
* Collin Dean as Gregory
* Melanie Lynskey as Beatrice
* Christopher Lloyd as the Woodsman
* Jack Jones as Jason Funderburker: The Frog
* Samuel Ramey as the Beast

## **Production**

**Over the Garden Wall** was first envisioned in 2004 with a scarier and more adventure-based storyline. Before working as a storyboard artist on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, artist Patrick McHale pitched the show in 2006, then known under the title **Tome of the Unknown**. The series would follow two brothers—Walter and Gregory—who, after signing themselves into a Faustian deal with a devil named Old Scratch, journey across the Land of the In-Between to track down the pages of a book of forgotten stories.

McHale saw it as "a possible Halloween special", but had trouble adapting the premise with a larger story arc. After his work for The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, McHale moved on to co-develop Adventure Time, where he served as creative director, and subsequently as a writer. The network later asked him if he had interest in developing a pilot, which led to him returning to **Tome of the Unknown**, polishing it and pitching it again to the network. After creating a pilot episode, **Tome of the Unknown: Harvest Melody**, McHale and the network settled upon the miniseries format for the ensuing series, as McHale felt that it would lead to "something that felt higher quality than what we could do with a regular series". McHale abandoned the original idea centered around chapters of a mystical tome and the series' title became **Over the Garden Wall**.

Production for **Over the Garden Wall** commenced in late 2013. McHale initially envisioned eighteen chapters in the series, but the episode count was brought to ten to accommodate budget and time constraints. Early drafts of episodes from the show's pitch bible included a skinless witch character and a villain who carves dice from the bones of kidnapped children, as well a running plot throughout four episodes in which Wirt and Gregory are transformed into animals (Gregory being a duck and Wirt being "either a bear or a dog ... Nobody can tell which").

The ten episodes marked the first miniseries on Cartoon Network. The show features Wood and Dean (reprising their roles from the short), along with Lynskey as the main voice cast. McHale and his crew tried to maintain a balance between frightening imagery and "episodes that are just light and funny". For the music, McHale drew inspiration from "classic American, opera singing". Nick Cross served as art director and Nate Cash as supervising director; both worked with McHale alongside storyboard artists located in New York and Chicago. This distance proved difficult for McHale, who found it "particularly daunting considering the idiosyncratic nature of the production".

## **Reception**

The series was well-received by television critics, who praised its atmosphere and characters. In 2015, the series won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. A one-shot comic book adaptation penned by McHale has been produced, with four further issues commissioned.

## **Trivia**

* It's the first miniseries produced by Cartoon NetworkStudios.

## **Navigation**

- Films: Ben 10: Race Against Time | Foster's Movie: Destination Imagination | Regular Show: The Movie | Steven Universe: The Movie