Northern Tails returns for its second season with new episodes of the Yukon-made puppet show
Northern Tails, the puppet-focused web series produced and filmed in Whitehorse, is coming back for its second season this spring, with new episodes dropping March 20. Producer Kelly Milner, who co-created the show with her late father, Bob Hayes, says making this new season was a much easier process than the first time around.
“It came together really quite seamlessly,” she says. “It’s pretty fun to see how much more efficient we are with the second season.”
Milner grew up in the Yukon, where her father worked as a biologist. He loved exploring the nature of the territory and sharing stories about the environment surrounding him, as many Yukoners do. While travelling in Europe, he saw a puppet show about arctic foxes that was equal parts silly and educational, and a light bulb went off for him.
“We started looking at this idea for a puppet show,” said Milner, who has a background in wildlife co-management and journalism, with a penchant for storytelling like her father. “We talked about this idea for quite a few years and it didn’t really go anywhere.”
It changed when Hayes was diagnosed with cancer and became unable to do much of his normal routine. This presented an opportunity for he and Milner to give the puppet show another go, this time putting their complete focus into developing it.
“In his last year, he helped develop the main characters and story arcs for the first season,” says Milner. “Unfortunately, he decided to end his fight with cancer before we went to camera, so he never saw the show, but he is still a very big part of what we’re doing and why this show has the heart that it has.”
Milner says her father’s influence still carries into the show’s second season. “It’s still really based in the science of the animals and the ecosystems of the boreal forest, but it’s also really silly, which is the way he would have wanted it.”
Northern Tails, released through Shot in the Dark Productions, follows several animals of the boreal forest, driven by a crew of ground squirrels who cover the goings-on of their ecosystem in a mockumentary style. The second season will see them in charge of the forest’s favourite television station and will continue the mix of sketch comedy and scientific explanations for which the show has become known.
“For season one, none of us knew what we were doing,” says Milner. “No one had ever done a puppet show, or certainly not a show of this fairly ambitious calibre, so everyone was learning.”
The 40-person crew trained in everything from writing for puppets to actually puppeteering. The set building and filming had to look different than a usual TV show or live puppet show, and Milner and her crew figured things out as they went.
“It was really exciting to get a second season because everyone was pretty thrilled to come back and, as they said, have another bite at the apple,” Milner says, confident that the new season improves upon its predecessor in every way. “One of the things we have here in the Yukon is a lot of incredibly talented people.”
Moira Sauer joined the project early on, as she had experience in street puppetry. Television puppetry was still a new challenge for her but she had worked with Milner on film projects before, and Sauer says she would follow the producer anywhere.
“It was all of my passions and skill set combined into one project,” she says, “and it was being done right in my backyard with a powerhouse producer.”
Sauer plays multiple characters on the show and worked additionally as a puppet captain on the second season. She recognizes that, while Milner and Hayes had the initial vision, it took the work of many people to bring the show to life and she is happy to be involved in doing so.
“The local team is incredible,” Sauer says. “Don Watt has designed and created the most-magical sets that are total works of art in and of themselves, and Marty O’Brien from Midnight Light came on board this season, as our DOP, and his care and attention was a treat to work with.
“But mostly credit is due to Kelly Milner, who has not only lifted the level of local production here in Whitehorse, but has also believed in this project and trusted us all to share the stories and magic from the boreal forest. I hope everyone here in the Yukon can feel like they, too, are part of Northern Tails … It belongs to all of us.
“And I also hope everyone gets a few chuckles in while learning a bit more about this awesome place we call home.”
Daniel Little has worn many hats throughout the production process for both seasons. He was originally brought on to be part of a writers room for the first season and ended up co-writing some of the episodes, as well as auditioning and becoming a puppeteer and directing five of the six episodes.
“I was all over the first season,” he says. “For the second season, basically, Kelly approached me and we decided that I would come on as the head writer and director of all the episodes of the second season, and that I would also puppeteer the character I had played in the first season and do a little more puppeteering.”
Little says he was able to go into the second season with more confidence, expecting to improve upon the first season because of the lessons he had learned throughout that process. Little is often involved with film arts in the territory and couldn’t pass up an opportunity to be part of a huge show made right in Whitehorse.
“For Northern Tails in particular, I was drawn to the project because I had spoken with Kelly and heard what the idea behind the show was, and just immediately fell in love,” Little says. “It’s The Muppets meets David Attenborough nature documentary and, to me, it automatically sells itself.”
Though the show is geared towards children, Milner says it can be enjoyable and educational for adults too. Because of how local it is, she didn’t expect the first season to take off in farther corners of the globe but was surprised to see what areas caught on early.
“When we launched it, we had a YouTube channel with zero followers, and within two weeks we had 50,000 views of our trailer,” she says. “We really quickly saw that there was an interested and excited audience of people kind of from around the world.”
The channel now sits at 7,000 subscribers, with the six episodes that comprise the first Northern Tails season still available to watch for free. Milner says lots of puppet enthusiasts enjoy the show, as well as locals and people fascinated by the nature of a region they haven’t visited.
“It’s pretty fun to see how positive the response has been, and we sort of feel vindicated in that, yes, we have lots of fans who are younger but we also found a lot of older kids and adults,” Milner says. “Adults think our show is pretty cute, and entertaining as well.”
Milner says this is in part due to the fact that the boreal forest is under-represented in environment-based entertainment.
“Lots of people don’t even know about the boreal forest,” Milner says. “It’s not a sexy ecosystem … Its scrawny trees and swamps are defining characteristics.
“We’re trying to raise awareness about how climates are changing and what that means for different people. The Arctic gets a lot of airtime because you have these really telegenic characters and species and ice, whereas the boreal forest is a little harder to capture.
“We try to have learning themes in every one of our episodes, but they’re kind of baked into the humour,” Milner says. “Realizing that we’re actually able to not only entertain people, but educate them a little bit, is pretty nice. It’s a nice thing to do.”
Head over to youtube.com/@NorthernTailsTV to catch up on Northern Tails’ first season and to check out the new episodes when they drop.
