STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In the 1990s, kids around this country met a little pup with a big imagination.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WISHBONE")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) What's the story, Wishbone? Do you think it's worth a look? It kind of seems familiar, like a story from a book.
INSKEEP: "Wishbone" was a live-action PBS show that followed a Jack Russell terrier and his owner, Joe. Wishbone would dream about classic literature and imagine himself as the main character.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Like "Frankenstein."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WISHBONE")
LARRY BRANTLEY: (As Wishbone) Victor Frankenstein, a young student of science, conducted his own secret scientific experiment. It's one of the greatest monster books ever and the scariest, the spine-tingliest, the flat-out spookiest - I'm rambling. Sorry.
MARTÍNEZ: And "Faust."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WISHBONE")
BRANTLEY: (As Wishbone) And how long do you get to keep my immortal soul?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) For all eternity.
BRANTLEY: (As Wishbone) Eternity? So we mean, like, forever eternity - no turning back. I'm not very comfortable with that.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, laughing).
MARTÍNEZ: The crew from the show put together a new documentary about it. It's called "What's The Story, Wishbone?"
INSKEEP: Joey Stewart was the first assistant director of "Wishbone," the TV show, and is the director of the documentary.
JOEY STEWART: Every time we meet people and work on different movies and TV shows, that's the only thing anybody wants to talk about.
INSKEEP: Every week, they needed to tell a different classic story in less than half an hour.
STEWART: So we'd get a script on a Monday. We'd break it down and figure out what the sets we needed to build, what the cast we needed to cast, what were all the dog tricks.
MARTÍNEZ: Soccer was that dog. Larry Brantley was his voice.
BRANTLEY: Jackie Kaptan, our head animal trainer, had a hard and fast rule which was nobody gets to pet the dog, period, end of story. He's hyper-focused, and he can lose that focus. So we all learned pretty early on this set discipline because we did not want to do anything that was going to pull him off focus.
MARTÍNEZ: Stewart says, despite being a show for kids...
STEWART: We weren't afraid of dark shows. Look at Joan of Arc.
INSKEEP: Talk about a hot take. He says a lot of the crew back then were young and inexperienced.
STEWART: If somebody offered me this job now, I would think they're crazy. But at the time, we didn't know any better.
MARTÍNEZ: Thirty years later, Stewart says it was one of the most important shows he's ever worked on.
STEWART: I mean, the legacy of the show, for me, is, you know, giving children an excitement for reading or an excitement about classic literature. And quite often, forming them into what they became later in their lives and remembering that "Wishbone" was a huge part of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WISHBONE")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) What's the story, Wishbone?
MARTÍNEZ: The documentary airs on PBS stations starting today. So what's the story, Wishbone?
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WISHBONE")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) What's the story, Wishbone?
(BARKING)
BRANTLEY: (As Wishbone) Are we on? Is this thing rolling? Are we - yeah. We got it? OK. This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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