Things take an emotional turn in Yonderland this week as Debbie explores her own history.
The prophecy of the second scroll prompts the Elders’ decision to evict Debbie from Yonderland, thus preventing her falling to the influence of her sister, Imperatrix. Debbie’s not ready to give up on Yonderland, though – especially having just learned the history of her birth family – and Elf offers to take her to the house she grew up in.
Here, Debbie has a touching reunion with her former nanny, the anthropomorphically-named Nanny Le Roo, who clearly has some issues to work through (and who really needs to stop keeping photos in her pouch.) So heartbroken at having lost Debbie as an infant, the guilt-ridden Nanny Le Roo has since locked away the sisters’ former nursery, and kept all the children entrusted to her care indoors, for safety.
Debbie convinces Nanny that it wasn’t her fault, and that the children should be free to play outside – and not a moment too soon, as Elf’s keen sense of smell had, in fact, been picking up a trace of explosive swamp gas.
Meanwhile, a strategically-mentioned fib sees Negatus accept an offer to teach a class in battle techniques, for which he is decidedly under-qualified. Meanwhile further, the demons attempt to hold a general election to determine Negatus’ replacement while he’s away. This goes actually about as well as a general election ever does: furniture gets ruined and the miserable status quo remains otherwise unchanged.
One of the show’s great strengths lies in its use of those little one-line gags and visddual puns liberally sprinkled through every episode: for instance, at a cocktail party, Negatus takes a skewer of cheese from a porcupine – a literal porcupine, it turns out, and quite cheesed off (if you’ll pardon the pun) to lose one of his quills.
The amount of detail that goes into these costumes and characters we will likely see once for a couple of lines is a testament to how much love goes into this show.
Not to mention a stellar performance from guest star Romesh Ranganathan as Pete’s exorcist to boot! This show really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Aired at 8pm on Monday 3 August 2015 on Sky1.
> Buy Season 1 on DVD on Amazon.
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