Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, on Apple TV+

The Peanuts comic-strip premiered in 1950, but Charlie Brown and the gang have always been Gen X’ers at heart. Think about it: they stay outside all day long and they never have any adult supervision. That is why they love camp, except maybe Sally. She is like the Gen-Z’er of Peanuts, who would rather stay home watching TV. Just for the record, this is not Camp Remote from Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown. This is Cloverhill Ranch, where everyone feels welcome, even a blockhead like Charlie Brown. He is excited to introduce Sally to the camp’s activities, but it turns out this might be the last hurrah in Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, directed by Eric Wiese, which premiers this Friday on Apple TV+.

Of course, the Peanuts kids can sing. They had their own hit Off-Broadway musical, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Group singing also happens to be a very camp thing to do. Frankly, Charlie Brown enjoys everything about Cloverhill, which seems very un-Charlie Brown, but the recent Apple TV+ specials have cut Chuck a lot of breaks. It is sort of nice, because we all love the character, but it still feels sort of wrong, because it breaks with the tradition established by Charles Schulz.

Regardless, Cloverhill is his happy place, but Charlie Brown cannot help noticing there have been fewer and fewer campers every year. Yet, he initially focuses on convincing Sally to be less of a miserable Gen Z wet blanket, while Snoopy and Woodstock commence a treasure hunt using the map they accidentally unearthed. Unfortunately, just as he starts to make progress with Sally, the invisible adults announce this will be Cloverhill’s final season. How can the Peanuts gang save the camp? This is a musical, so that should be your first clue.

In fact, this happens to be a pretty solid musical. It isn’t quite Good Man, but it features two pleasingly melodic and memorable tuns penned by Ben Folds. “When We were Light” is a standout that measures up to anything you can currently hear on Broadway, while “Look Up, Charlie Brown” has a really nice musical theater dramatic arc. However, Foods’ best Peanuts tune remains the title song to Snoopy Presents: It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown, which should have won an Emmy (or even a Grammy).

Teen Titans: Snowblind, at Paley

KGBeast is one of DC’s most sinister villains, but his alter-ego, Anatoli Knyazev was converted into a good-guy on Arrow, because who could believe Russians might commit heinous crimes against humanity? So far, DC animated productions have been much more successful incorporating its Cold War characters and legacy, especially in Superman: Red Son. As a further case in point, the early 2000’s animated Teen Titans series offered an interesting take on Red Star in the episode “Snowblind,” which screens at the Paley Center as part of its Winter Frolic programming.

In this version of DC reality, Leonid Kovar, a.k.a. Red Star, was the lucky subject of a Soviet “super-soldier” experiment devised by the notoriously reliable Prof. Chang (a recurring villain in the animated series). Yet, much like the Hulk, the super-Soviet could not control his powers. When over-agitated, he expelled tremendous bursts of radioactive energy. Consequently, Red Star sequestered himself in an adapted bunker outside the secret military installation where he was formerly based.

Suspicious radioactive readings brought the Teen Titans to Kovar’s remote Siberian homeland. However, Red Star is not producing the energy they detected. There is something else terrorizing the local village, but they just assume it is the same radioactive devil they know.

Screenwriter Rob Hoegee does his best to play down Red Star’s Communist era origins, but they are inescapable. Indeed, Raskov, his former commander turned persecutor, bears all the worst hallmarks of the Soviet era military. However, this version of Red Star is an acutely tragic character, who is developed fairly thoroughly for a half-hour episode.

Secret Level, on Prime

"Live, die, repeat” was the tagline and Macguffin of Edge of Tomorrow, but it is just how things work in video games. Some of these animated short films cleverly incorporate that aspect of gameplay. Each original constituent film is set within the world of a popular game (including massively multiplayer online RPGs), but maybe not too popular, since their rights were still available. As is usually the case for anthologies, the results vary considerably in creator Tim Miller’s 15-part Secret Level, which premieres tomorrow on Prime Video.

There is a lot of CGI, featuring human depictions that try and most often fail to traverse the uncanny valley. As a result, some of the less “realistic” looking films stand out more. The opener, “Dungeons & Dragons: The Queen’s Cradle” is a perfect example of the CGI look that will quickly grow repetitive. However, the story written by Brooke Bolander certainly delivers on its promise of dragons. It is also one of the more successful at character establishment. However, the cliffhanger-style ending feels like a bit of a cheat (which too, will be a recurring response throughout Secret Level).

The next two constituent films are also two of the best. “Sifu: It Takes a Life,” directed by Laszlo Ruska with a story credited to Rich Larson is a mystical martial arts beatdown, in which our hero takes on a brutal gang to avenge his grandfather, even if it kills him, repeatedly, just so long as he still has one of his lives signified by a string of gold coins left after the carnage.

“New World: The Once and Future King,” written by JT Petty & Philip (The Spine of Night) Gelatt, is by far the funniest, thanks to voiceover work of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gamely satirizes his own action image while providing the voice of the hapless King Aelstrom. The entitled idiot intended to conquer the kingdom of Aeternum, but since the land there bestows eternal life, it creates a meritocracy among residents, leaving him ill-equipped maintain the status he expects by birthright.

“Unreal Tournament: Xan” looks very much like many other Secret Level mini-sodes. The hook here is that it openly invites viewers to root for the “rise of the machines” and against humanity when the evil Gamemaster (voiced by Elodie Yung) condemns a group of rebellious androids to a series of gladiatorial games against humans. Doesn’t that just sound like a really bad idea?

The lowest point probably comes in “Warhammer 40,000: And They Shall Know No Fear,” in which a group of space-faring marines are dispatched on a mission that is almost impossible to follow, because the animation is so confusing.

If you are expecting anything like the old Saturday morning cartoon from Victor (Nocturna) Maldonado & Alfredo Torres’ “PAC-MAN: Circle,” you will be shocked. In this case, it an extremely dark allegorical take on the classic arcade game. The ambition here is impressive, but your nostalgia will be dashed to smithereens, so temper your expectations.

Damian (Another Day of Life) Nenow’s “Crossfire: Good Conflict” is a refreshing change of pace, partly because it is the only short that does not incorporate any science fiction or fantastical elements. It also tells a fully self-contained and satisfying story, while maintaining a high degree of ambiguity regarding the why’s of everything. There is also a whole heck of a lot of shooting.

“Armored Core: Asset Management,” based on a Peter Watts story, also feels very similar to the “Unreal Tournament” and “Warhammer 40,000” episodes, but it is easier to follow and features stronger characters. It has the benefit of Keanu Reeves as a broken down mecha pilot who still thinks he has the right stuff. The mecha-action is very video game-like, but that hardly counts as a criticism for a series like this. Wisely, the animators also deliberately modeled the pilots features on Reeve’s, which should please his fans.

Valley of the Dinosaurs: Forbidden Fruit

Zeitgeisty media often come in twos. Usually, it is similarly themed films that release around the same time, like Armageddon and Deep Impact or Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. We’ve had dueling Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent movies. It happens in TV too. Literally fifty years ago today, two animated children’s series about modern-day families transported back to prehistory debuted. One was the hybrid-stop-motion Land of the Lost. The other was a traditional cell-animated adventure from Hanna-Barbera. Although it was not a huge hit, there was probably enough early-1980s syndication and licensing for Valley of the Dinosaurs to make an impression with some Gen X’ers, even though we probably missed the initial episode, “Forbidden Fruit” when it premiered on this day in 1974.

Logically, professor John Butler and his wife Kim took their entire family on his Amazonia research trip, including their dog Digger. Frankly, we can accept Digger, because he causes far less trouble than his bratty son Greg, who is the one they should have left behind. He will be quite a burden for his older teen sister Katie, who is often the one who must corral him. Nevertheless, they were all together in the raft that was swept up into a vortex and sucked into a “world that time forgot.”

Fortunately, Gorok’s neanderthal family befriends the Butlers, teaching them how to survive in their extreme new environment. They match up pretty well, since Gorok and Gara have a teen son, Lok and a younger daughter Tana. They even have a baby stegosaurus, Glump, who becomes Digger’s playmate.

In fact, Digger and Glump are all kinds of likably cute. Dogs and dinosaurs are definitely sure-fire, evergreen animation subjects, which were in Hanna-Barbera’s wheel house. Nineteen years before Jurassic Park, animation was still the best way to present humans and dinosaurs in the same frame. However, Valley probably did not earn many paleontologists’ endorsements, especially when “Forbidden Fruit” portrays a rampaging brontosaurus.

However, it evokes all kinds of archetypes when he Butlers mistakenly harvest the “forbidden fruit” reserved for Maligue, the giant (vegetarian) brontosaurus. Of course, most of the Butlers heed Gorok’s warning, but not Greg, who was a proto-Gen Z’er, refusing to listen to his Boomer parents, way back in 1974. Of course, Maligue smells his fruit, so he comes looking for Greg’s stash.

Shrewdly, Hanna-Barbera did not waste time with a long, drawn-out origin story. They give viewers the essentials every week in the opening credit sequence. Instead, they jump right into the adventures. Obviously, this series follows a formula, in which the Butlers’ ignorance (most often Greg’s) land them in trouble, but the scientific knowledge of Prof. John (who resembles a white-haired George Peppard) helps save the day. Perhaps when they are rescued, he will bring back some dinosaur DNA, just for the sake of science.

Batman: Caped Crusader, on Prime

There have been a lot of different Batmans, ranging from the Adam Westverse Batman to the Dark Knights of Christopher Nolan and Frank Miller. This Batman of this 1930s looking cartoon-universe probably “knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.” He is still very much the Dark Knight and Bruce Wayne fans know and love, but several regular supporting characters have been altered for dramatic and/or other purposes in creator Bruce Timm’s 10-part animated series Batman: Caped Crusader, which premieres tomorrow on Prime.

For a lot of fans, the absence of a Robin is maybe goods news. Regardless, the gist of Batman’s backstory remains the same, but he is not yet working cooperatively with Commissioner Gordon. He is still considered a vigilante, whom the conspicuously corrupt mayor wants behind bars. However, crooked cops like Dets. Flass and Bullock clearly are not up to the challenge.

Since those two are on the take, new crime lord (or rather lady) Oswalda Cobblepot, a.k.a. The Penguin, only has Batman to worry about. Rather colorfully, Timm and co-writer Jase Ricci reconceive the supervillain as ribald torch-singer in the Sophie Tucker tradition. Minnie Driver’s voice perfectly positions her as the psychotic Auntie Mame of super-villainy. It is the rare case of gender-swapping that comes across as clever rather than unnecessarily forced.

In fact, Timm and Ricci nicely balance the usual suspects with some fresher choices, like Oenomania and Clayface. The latter’s civilian alter-ego, horror movie actor Basil Karlo, is appropriately given features reminiscent of Boris Karloff and Peter Cushing.

However, Greg Rucka’s script for “And Be a Villain,” directed by Matt Peters, does not embrace the 1930’s Universal monster aesthetic to the extent Timm did in his 2014 short film, Batman: Strange Days, the unofficial, retroactive pilot for Caped Crusader. In a mere three minutes, Timm stylishly created a “Batman vs. Frankenstein,” using Hugo Strange and his “Monster Man” as surrogates for the infamous mad scientist and his creation.

Arguably, Strange Days, is more visually arresting than anything in the series, but the Film Noir, vintage Warner Brother gangster movie world-building hospitably suits this alternate Batman. Timm and company also deviate from standard lore in unexpected but not disrespectful ways when they introduce Selina Kyle in “Kiss of the Catwoman” and Harley Quinn in “The Stress of Her Regard.” Again, Christina Ricci and Jamie Chung are shrewdly cast as the respective super-femme fatales.

In between, the fourth episode, “Night of the Hunters,” boldly ends on an ironically pessimistic note. Even though Batman averts tragedy, some of the bad guys are empowered. “Night Ride” also takes a risk breaking format to allow for a supernatural storyline, without a Scooby-Doo explanation. Linton Midnite is a cool and intriguingly morally ambiguous addition to the “Caped Crusader” universe. Voice performer Cedric Yarbrough brings a lot to later episodes, both as Midnite and Rupert Thorne, the mob boss trying to corrupt DA Arthur Dent, who appropriately looks and sounds a lot like Norman Mailer.

Mr. Birchum, on Daily Wire+

As a junior high shop teacher, Mr. Birchum’s classroom concerns are binary in nature. His students are either wearing their safety glasses or they aren’t. Their power tools are either on or off. His students’ “lived experiences” and “their own truths” do no make any difference. Unfortunately, that is the kind of thinking his school’s new J.E.D.I. (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) officer wants to stamp out. However, the cranky wood-worker will not be quietly cancelled out of his job in the debut episode of Adam Carolla’s new animated series, Mr. Birchum, which premieres tomorrow on Daily Wire+.

It is the first day of school, but Birchum and his best buddy workmate, driver’s ed teacher Mr. Gage, are already dreading the stupidity of their students and the school’s bureaucracy—even before they meet Karponzi, the new J.E.D.I. officer. Since Birchum’s unwoke rep proceeds him, Karponzi is already gunning for him and the lazy, feather-nesting Principal Bortles is not about to object.

Mr. Birchum is a character Carolla developed early in his radio career, whom he resurrected to serve as a zeitgeisty critic of the decaying American educational system. There is a little bit of Archie “Silent Majority” Bunker in him and even more of Tim Allen’s Home Improvement persona. However, Mr. Birchum is more right than wrong and he is smarter than 99% of the people around him.

He is also really funny. Yes, this is a Daily Wire+ series executive produced by Ben Shapiro, but it is important to remember Carolla paid his dues touring comedy clubs for years, before he became a leading free speech advocate and critic of “safe spaces.” Carolla and writers Mark Hoffmeier, Byron Kavanagh, and Mike Lynch score plenty of points against Karponzi’s rigid extremism. However, some of the funniest gags come from traditional workplace and family sitcom situations.

The show’s pointed perspective just gives them more bite, as when Birchum’s sympatico, woodworking-crazy stepdaughter Jeanie stages a protest against her realtor mother’s desecration of a mahogany fireplace. The writers even gently mock Birchum’s rightwing persona, when he grudgingly admits the teachers’ union he despises probably saves his bacon.

Nevertheless, some of the series satire is worthy of South Park, which was obviously a source of inspiration. Arguably, J.E.D.I. is the funniest, most ruthlessly cutting acronym since Team America’s Film Actors Guild.

The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, on Prime Video

For years, the setting of James White’s Sector General novels was science fiction’s classic space hospital. It probably still should be. His long-standing series was known for its pacifism and tolerant depictions of alien species, yet compared to sex and identity politics that dominate recent “trendy” sf writing, White’s books probably seem rather old-fashioned to many editors (but not necessarily to readers). This space hospital clearly reflects current trends. Nevertheless, viewers can easily see how White’s concept might have been cannibalized in creator Cirocco Dunlap’s animated series The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, which premieres today on Prime Video.

Friends since med school, Dr. Klak and Dr. Sleech (try not to call her “Screech,” that’s another show) are hot-shot surgeons at a space hospital that takes all varieties of aliens, no matter how weird. Dr. Klak suffers from debilitating anxiety that her own mother fuels to generate fodder for her pop psychology books. Sleech is recklessly confident, both professionally and in her promiscuous hook-ups, but they are platonically devoted to each other, when they are not arguing like grumpy old men.

In episode one, Klak and Sleech discover a parasitic brain worm that eats anxiety. Unfortunately for Klak, if the worm grows too large, it can burst the host’s skull. Nevertheless, it seems like such a promising avenue of research, they keep it in containment, violating all kinds of laws and protocols. Their experiments will continue throughout the first eight-episode season, while they also navigate dysfunctional romantic relationships.

Klak still carries a torch for the spider-like Dr. Azel, who is chief of surgeon at the number one hospital in the galaxy, thanks its highly compromising corporate sponsorship. Meanwhile, despite her aversion to commitment, Sleech can never quite disentangle herself from Dr. Plowp, a bird-like empath, who is feeling especially needy, because of his species’ late-adult puberty.

There is a lot of sexual content and slapstick fluid splattering, but it is not as exhaustingly and self-indulgently edgy as the aggressively abrasive Hazbin Hotel. Frankly, most of the sex scenes in Second Best are visual gags built around bizarre alien anatomy. Like most successful sitcoms, just about all of the characters are unlikable and annoying, but that is what Dunlap and the writers derive humor from. We can laugh at all of Sleech’s humiliations, because she has them coming and we groan at Klak’s Charlie Brown self-sabotaging, because she just cannot help herself.

However, relentlessly sarcastic Nurse Tup gets the most laughs, by far, thanks equally to her mordantly observant dialogue and Natasha Lyonne’s sly voice-over performance. Kieran Culkin also outdoes the Crane Brothers expressing Plowp’s neuroses. However, the voices of Keke Palmer and Stephanie Hsu are not particularly memorable as Klak and Sleech.

Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin, on Apple TV+

Charles M. Schulz’s introduction of the black character Franklin in his beloved Peanuts comic strip eleven days after the assassination of Martin Luther King is widely considered an important statement on behalf of racial integration. Yet, Franklin was even more culturally significant, because he was the son of a Vietnam veteran (at least as I see it, as a fellow son of a Vietnam vet myself). Franklin’s arrival is adapted (and somewhat updated) in the latest Peanuts special, Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

To reflect current times, Franklin’s dad is still a vet, but the details of his service are kept vague. Of course, like most military brats, he has had to move constantly to each new duty station. This time, they have relocated to wherever Charlie Brown lives. Always a little shy, Franklin has a particularly hard time fitting in, because he is thrown by Lucy’s grouchiness and Linus’s weird “Great Pumpkin” babble.  And then there’s Pigpen.

The only one who talks to him is the round-headed kid, Charlie Brown. Both could use a friend, so they enter the local soapbox derby together, but like in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown, the dangerous competition puts them under stress, before bringing them back together.

Although Franklin never had a surname in the comic strip, Schulz dubbed him Franklin Armstrong in one of the specials, as a tribute to cartoonist Robb Armstrong, who co-wrote this special. In most respects, it stays faithful to Franklin’s debut in the strip. However, it follows a trend in some of the new Apple Peanuts specials that moderates Charlie Brown’s born loser blockheadedness. Poor Charlie Brown just isn’t supposed to kick the football—ever.

Hazbin Hotel, on Prime

Apparently, even in Hell, nobody really believes in criminal rehabilitation. Charlie Morningstar is the exception. She can believe whatever she wants, because being Satan’s daughter technically makes her Princess of Hell. Unfortunately, nobody takes her earnest progressive reformist agenda seriously in Vivienne Medrano’s animated series Hazbin Hotel, which premieres tomorrow on Prime.

Every year, warring angels from Heaven sweep down on Hell to annihilate the (already dead) overflowing ranks of damned sinners and the demons who hold their souls in thrall. It is a horror show Morningside would like to avoid. Her vision is the “Happy Hotel,” where she will help rehab sinners, so they can climb that stairway back up to Heaven. Few believe it is possible and even fewer are willing to mend their wayward ways.

In addition to her girlfriend, Morningside has the “help” of Alastor, the “Radio Demon,” a powerful and mysterious overlord. The former 1920s radio star sounds somewhat like Rudy Vallee’s voice broadcast through his megaphone, which is a clever device. When he was mortal, Alastor was a New Orleans native, so he has good taste in music. Supposedly, he offered his services out of boredom, but it is pretty clear the demon has his own nefarious agenda.

One episode of Hazbin Hotel can be funny in a naughty, snarky kind of way, but the dark attitude quickly becomes exhausting. The barrage of crude sexual comments and explicit cursing simply does not wear well over time. One of the hotel’s first reluctant residents is “Angel Dust,” a gay adult film star—and boy, do they go there, a lot.

Hazbin also happens to be a musical, featuring a Broadway-style number in every episode. However, they cannot compete with Satan’s showstopper in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. The animation is colorful and lively, but the personalities viewers must spend time with are abrasive and/or annoying, especially including Morningstar. It really is the characters, not the setting, considering the superior charm of the animated feature Hell and Back. By far, the best voice performance is that of the great Keith David (who can make anything sound interesting) as Husk, the hotel bartender.

The Velveteen Rabbit, on Apple TV+

What do Rankin-Bass, Hanna-Barbera, pianist George Winston, and Don Bluth all now have in common with Magic Lantern Pictures (the producers of The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom)? They have all worked on adaptations of Margey Williams children’s classic. Sadly, Bluth’s never came to fruition, but the latest from Magic Lantern might just become the definitive version. Jennifer Perrott’s The Velveteen Rabbit (with animation directed by Rick Thiele) also plays up Christmas, making it perfectly timed to premiere this Wednesday on Apple TV+.

While clocking in at a kid-friendly 45-minutes, this Velveteen Rabbit incorporates live-action with both stop-motion animation of the Rabbit interacting with the other toys and traditional cell animation of the floppy-eared mammal’s imaginary adventures with William. The lad is a shy and moody little boy, who is having trouble making friends in his new school. (You would think he would have no trouble making friends, because his family is clearly loaded, but so be it.)

Ever since William received the Rabbit as his first Christmas present in their sprawling new manor house, they have been inseparable. Yet, the snobby other toys look down on the Rabbit, because he lacks their shiny metallic parts. Nevertheless, when William gets sick, it is the Velveteen Rabbit who offers him comfort.

In some ways, Williams’ story is a bit of a downer. To the credit of all involved, including screenwriter Tom Bidwell, the Magic Lantern production stays faithful to the early 1920’s realities of Scarlet Fever. Yet, when you really think about it, the Rabbit’s ultimately reward definitely relates to some seriously Christmasy themes.

Curses!, on Apple TV+

The "restricted wing" of the Vanderhouven family mansion is sort of like the antique vault in Friday the 13^th: The Series (unrelated to the movies) or the sinister collection of demonic objects (like Annabelle) assembled by the Warrens in the Conjuring films. The difference is the Vanderhouvens want to deaccession their collection, returning the objects to where they came from. They have their reasons in creators Jim Cooper & Jeff Dixon’s ten-part animated series Curses!, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Twelve-year-old Pandora spends most of her time skateboarding through the halls of their stately, but eccentric mansion and devising new ways to act irresponsibly, while her older brother Russ concentrates on being a whiny introvert. Unbeknownst to them and their poor mother Sky, their father Alex is desperately researching occult means to reverse the curse afflicting the Vanderhouven family. Unfortunately, his time is up, which means he has been turned to stone.

When searching for their petrified father, the family discovers the restricted wing and meets his enchanted helpers: Larry, an eye-patch-sporting pirate skull and the more fastidious Stanley, a wooden totem or fetish. As they blunder around, the Vanderhouvens reawaken the powers of the collection amassed by Great-Grandfather Cornelius Vanderhouven, who was not unlike Uncle Louis Vendredi in Friday the 13^th. After corralling a wild baboon mask, the family deduces they might be able to reverse the curse, if they return all the antiquities Cornelius plundered to where they belong.

Curses has been billed as gateway horror for kids, but maybe fifty percent of the time, the series is more like tomb-raiding (or rather restoring) adventure. They even jet-set around in a Grumman Albatross piloted by their tough-talking no-questions-asked family pal, Margie. Probably the coolest and most truly horror-like episode takes the family into a rare Japanese painting inhabited by demons, but there is also an excursion to the Himalayas that adds clever mind- and time-bending dimensions.

Regardless, there is a good deal of intriguing magic and cosmic mayhem. Fittingly, the legendary Robert Englund supplies the voice of nasty old Cornelius, who will have a role to play in this nefarious business. The kids need to be grounded, but Larry and Stanley are guaranteed to charm eight- to twelve-year-olds. They also look very cool.

Shape Island: Creepy Cave Crawl, on Apple TV+

If you do not enjoy Halloween, you’re a square. That is literally true in this very young-skewing Apple TV+ series. In a Three Bears-like distribution, Square is miserable during Halloween, Triangle loves the holiday, especially the tricks, while Circle enjoys celebrating in responsible moderation. Circle will most likely have the right approach in Shape Island’s holiday special, “Creepy Cave Crawl,” which premieres this Friday on Apple TV+.

Basically, this is a late bonus episode for season one of Shape Island, but it is still nice to see Apple semi-revive the tradition of the animated holiday special (remember the B.C. Easter special?). The scares are all very gentle, but Triangle is still cruising for a Halloween bruising. Circle is usually more indulgent of his monster-themed pranks, but he is really pushing it this year. In fact, when he repurposes all the holiday jam she and Square just finished making for his haunted cave tour, they both storm out in a huff. That leaves Triangle alone with all the cave’s spooky inhabitants, who had been quietly watching them.

Of course, there is no gore or serious peril in “Creepy Cave Crawl.” At least this special is also refreshingly free of woke messaging and virtue signaling (I can’t vouch for the rest of the series). There is also enough pumpkin spice and innocent Halloween cos play to satisfy young viewers’ seasonal expectations.

The character designs (adapted from Jon Klassen’s illustrations for Barnett’s books) are obviously very simple, but they have distinct personalities. For older viewers, just seeing a Halloween special is sort of nostalgic. It makes you hungry for Dolly Madison Zingers. Nice and age-appropriate, “Creepy Cave Crawl” is recommended for kids when it starts streaming Friday (10/20) on Apple TV+.

Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie, on Apple TV+

In terms of temperament, Marcie is probably the closest to poor Charlie Brown, but she is no blockhead and there is no way her best friend, Patricia Peppermint Patty would ever forget about her. Still, there are times she takes Marcie for granted. In fact, many of the shy, bookish girl’s insights go unappreciated in Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie, the latest Peanuts special, which premieres tomorrow on Apple TV+.

Peppermint Patty is determined to win her school’s annual golf tournament, even though she has incredibly stiff competition from Snoopy. Her not-so-secret weapon is her caddy, Marice who can read greens and winds better than Bagger Vance. However, Marcie has other issues on her mind, like the insufficient number of pizza slices in the cafeteria at lunch time and the hall congestion in between periods that always makes the undersized underclassmen late for class. She has ideas to solve these problems, if people will listen to her.

One-of-a-Kind does not have an original song like the memorable title tune of It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown, but it is another good opportunity for a long-time supporting Peanuts character to get a turn in the spotlight. Marcie is definitely a sweet kid, who has many admirable traits worth emulating. Plus, her golf tips are surprisingly good for a cartoon character.

Of course, Snoopy rocks golf clothes like nobody’s business. He has relatively little screen-time in this special, but he makes the most of it. Screenwriter Betsy Walters does a nice job deepening Marcie’s relationship with Peppermint Patty, in ways that the Charles Shultz family clearly felt was in keeping with the original comic strips and their conception for the special.

Strange Planet, on Apple TV+

Science fiction is supposed to take us to strange places. Star Trek literally promised that at the start of each episode. However, the whole point of this animated series is the familiarity of its alien behavior. Creators Dan Harmon and Nathan Pyle adapted Pyle’s children’s-books-for-adults as Strange Planet (not to be confused with Strange World or Forbidden Planet), which premieres Wednesday on Apple TV+.

The humor of Strange Planet is very much in the tradition of anthropologist Horace Mitchell Miner’s often-reprinted spoof-essay “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” which presented 20^th grooming and medical techniques as if they were the customs of a primitive indigenous tribe. The general purpose was to make us question how much of what we assume is modern and advanced really makes logical sense or are we mostly observing social mores. Fair enough, but you should probably continue brushing your teeth.

In the case of Strange Planet, the bulbous headed aliens are just like us, except they are extremely literally in everything they do. That is where the humor is supposed to come in. For instance, in the first episode, “The Flying Machine,” we hear all about “comfort supervisors” who distribute “jitter liquid” and “mild poison” on “flying machines.” Of course, we are meant to recognize them as flight attendants serving coffee and booze.

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, on HBO Max

The word "Mogwai” roughly means “evil spirit” or “demon” in Cantonese, but the CCP does not want Cantonese spoken anymore, especially not in Hong Kong. Of course, they wouldn’t accept a Chinese villain either, even though the prequel under consideration is set in 1920 Shanghai. Yet, evil criminal mastermind Riley Greene is by far the funniest character in this animated series, so do not even try to root against him when showrunners Tze Chun & Brendan Hay’s ten-episode Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai premieres Tuesday on [HBO] Max.

Before Gizmo the Mogwai ended up in Mr. Wing’s Chinatown curiosities shop, he was unceremoniously plucked out of the Valley of Jade and literally dropped into the human world by a bird of prey. Young Sam Wing’s irresponsible adventurer grandfather recognizes the dangers Mogwai represent to humanity, especially if they get wet and eat after midnight, so he prepares his grandson to return Gizmo to his fabled home. Unfortunately, Greene and his henchmen get to the Wings first.

Most of his goons show little initiative, but Elle (who is ambiguously "anime"-looking) is the exception. She will help Sam and Gizmo escape, but young Wing remains distrustful of the “Mary Sue” street urchin. However, he needs Elle’s street smarts to elude Greene and return Gizmo to his home. He is also worried about his parents, whom Greene holds hostage, for leverage. His grandfather will not be able to help either, because Greene ingested him, using “pearl magic.”

Poor Sam Wing could not inspire any less confidence as a hero, which is a problem, considering has the most screen-time of all the human, non-Mogwai characters. Anybody we have to spend this much time with should at least be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Likewise, Elle’s relentlessly abrasive attitude quickly becomes grating.

Of course, little Gizmo is still cute, but let’s be honest. He is a terrible “father.” As in Joe Dante’s original film, his offspring are never as sweet-tempered as he is, even during their furry stage, and they seem to want the evil transformation caused by a post-midnight snack. Why can’t he ever pass along his adorable genes?

The one thing Chun and Hay generally get right is the tone. Like the films, they combine a “gee-whiz” sense of wonder with some outrageously over-the-top mayhem. This show has a high body count, produced in extraordinarily violent ways. Even though Dante joined as a “consulting producer,” real fans will be disappointed that no character in Secrets of the Mogwai resembles his late, beloved crony, Dick Miller.

NYICFF ’23: Moominvalley

Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Tove Jansson’s Moomins characters are popular throughout Europe and maybe even more so in Japan, where there have been numerous anime adaptations and one of two Moomins theme parks. However, they have a smaller cult following here in America, mostly from fans of Japanese animation. The British dub for Sky TV could still find an audience here, if a streamer picked it up, given the voice talent (including Kate Winslet and Taron Egerton during earlier seasons). For Moomins lovers, three episodes of the third season screen again today during the 2023 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

Moomins look like hippos, but they are trolls—of the pre-social media variety. They are also quite sweet-tempered. It is mostly Moomins in Moominvalley, but they are a few other creatures, like the Kangaroo-looking Sniff and some humanoids, who are referred to as “Hemulens.” Perhaps for accessibility’s sake, the three episodes selected for NYICFF feature the Moomins helping their human friends.

In “Toffle’s Tall Tales,” Moomintroll (son of Moominpappa and Moominmamma) and Sniff help the five-year-old-looking little boy Toffle, who was changed to non-binary in this series (to appease the new kind of woke trolls), find a safe place to stay while the residents of Moominvalley hibernate. Their journey gets thoroughly complicated by Toffle’s penchant for spinning outrageous yarns. Conveniently, Jansson has been dead since 2001, so she had no feedback on the revision to her original character.

In “Miss Fillyjonk’s Last Hurrah,” Moomintroll misdiagnoses a tiny chicken bone lodged in her throat as inevitably fatal, so instead of trying to cure her, he convinces his severe spinsterish neighbor to finally enjoy some adventures in life, while she can. It is a very O. Henry-ish “carpe diem” episode, but pleasantly so.

Finally, in “Snufkin and the Fairground,” Moomintroll’s best friend (who displays anarchist tendencies in Jansson’s books) takes over a popular amusement park, after the previous owner resigns. Not surprisingly, he turns out to be a weak manager.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, on Apple TV+

Homecoming is a staple theme of holiday specials, but unlike Pa Walton, this unnamed Boy does not know where home is. Yet, he is determined to find it. His journey will be more of a fable than an adventure, especially considering his ability to talk to his animal companions in Peter Baynton’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and The Horse, produced by J.J. Abrams, which premieres tomorrow on Apple TV+.

When the Boy wakes up in the forest, he has no idea how he got there or where he lives. Fortunately, he runs into the Mole, who has all kinds of helpful ideas, like following the river to the human settlement. Initially, the Boy must protect the Mole from the Fox, but when the little mammal frees his predator from a hunter’s snare, he starts to trail after them, shyly. The going gets easier once the Horse joins up with them, especially when they need a wind-break from the storm.

Co-adapted by Charlie Mackesy from his children’s book, The Boy etc. features some platitude heavy-dialogue, by Tom Hollander manages to sell some of the clunkiest, fridge-worthy banalities, with his warmly sensitive voice-over performance as the Mole (he even sort of looks like a mole in real-life). It is sort of like the Pooh stories at their most Taoist, pushing the envelope of New Age schmaltz. However, the stylish animation, derived from Mackesy’s original illustrations, is quite elegant.

Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen

This would be the second invasion underway in 20^th Century Tibet. The first came when the Communist-dominated PRC occupied and annexed the sovereign nation in 1951. The second is the alien intelligence exerting a sinister influence over a remote Himalayan monastery. One of its tools happen to be hairy snow beasts. Fortunately, the Tardis finds its way there in “The Abominable Snowmen,” a formerly lost six-episode Doctor Who story-arc, recreated with animation and the original audio track, which releases today on BluRay.

Initially, the Second (Patrick Troughton) Doctor is thrilled to back in Tibet. He was there several hundred years prior, when he accepted one of the Detsen Monastery’s holy relics for safe keeping, during times of turmoil. The Doctor now hopes to return it, not knowing these too are times of trial for Detsen, but not because of the PLA invasion, which goes unmentioned during “Abominable Snowmen,” even though it was originally produced in 1967.

Unfortunately, the Doctor receives a rather rude welcome, thanks to English explorer Edward Travers, who stokes the suspicions of Khrisong, the Tibetan warrior protecting Detsen, against the Time Lord. Travers, who would return in a later mostly-lost Doctor Who adventure, mistakenly assumes the Doctor is a reporter or a rival hoping to exploit or sabotage his search for the Yeti.

Amazingly, Padmasambhava, the high lama of the monastery remembers the Doctor from his previous visit. However, the ancient monk is not himself. Something latched onto Padmasambhava during his astral wanderings and now holds the very senior monk in thrall. Its chief pawns happen to be the hirsute robotic creatures Travers reasonably took for Yetis. Whatever they are, they trap the Doctor’s bickering companions, Jamie and Victoria, in a cave at the end of the first episode.

The BBC’s penny-wise-pound-foolish tape-wiping practices in the 1960s and 1970s almost makes a nerd’s head explode. How much revenue have they missed out on by reusing recycling the tapes of old Doctor Who episodes or their production of Asimov’s Caves of Steel, starring Peter Cushing? In some cases, where the audio tracks still exist, they have resurrected missing Doctor Who episodes through original animation, as they have done for “Abominable Snowmen.” The original video survives for the second episode, which is included in the BluRay set, along with black-and-white and color animated recreations of all six installments. Arguably, the best way to experience the authentic viewing experience is by selection the black-and-white animation for episodes one and three through six and the surviving second live-action episode.

Regardless, it is nice to have a “new” vintage Doctor Who episode back in circulation, especially since it holds special behind-the-scenes significance, co-starring Jack Watling, who played Travers in multiple adventures, with his daughter, Victoria Watling, who portrayed the Doctor’s companion, Victoria Wakefield. The spartan Tibetan setting looks good both in the surviving episode and the black-and-white episodes. Admittedly, the big furry Yeti robots look weirdly cute instead of scary, but they are definitely in keeping with the low-budget aesthetic of vintage Doctor Who fans know and love.

Tatami Time Machine Blues, on Hulu

In the Quantum Leap series, neither Sam Beckett or Ben Song worries too much about time paradoxes. Changing history is their mission. However, these Kyoto college students are more familiar with time travel science fiction that argues any change in the past could potentially destroy the present as we know it. Unfortunately, they remember all that butterfly-effect jazz after they start fooling around with the time machine they discover in their dorm. Putting the time travel tooth paste back in the tube is tricky prospect in the six-episode anime series Tatami Time Machine Blues, directed by Shingo Natsumi, which premieres today on Hulu.

Anime fans might remember how luckless Senpai pined for “The Girl with Black Hair” in Masaki Yuasa’s The Night is Short, Walk on Girl. It turns out her name is Akashi. He hasn’t really asked her out yet, but he sees her regularly when she visits residents of his “tatami” dorm. Much to his dismay, Akashi has become a disciple of Higuchi, an eternal slacker-student, along with Senpai’s nemesis, Ozu.

Described as a half-demon-half-student, Ozu loves to torment Senpai, but he rather irks everyone when he damages the remote control to Senpai’s air conditioner, the only working unit in the housing complex. The next day, when they students discover a working time machine hidden in the closet, the logically decide to travel back in time to save the remote (the only way to turn it on). However, the more they think about it, the more they realize they might be causing a space-time continuum disaster. To prevent catastrophe, they must travel back in time again, which inevitably leads to even more complications, and so on.

Makoto Ueda’s adaption of Tomihiko Morimi’s play (which was a sequel to his novel The Tatami Galaxy) is a very clever micro-time travel romp, in the spirit of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, while retaining the neurotic humanism of Walk on Girl. It is sweet, smart, and often quite funny. The animation is not quite as vibrantly colorful as Yuasa’s film, but it is still lively and distinctive, while the character design is largely consistent.

Pantheon, on AMC+

In Beautiful Dreamer, author Ken Liu previously introduced us to a terminally ill mother, who went to extraordinary lengths to maintain a presence in her daughter’s life. Yet, the science fiction means she employs, embarking on faster-than-light space voyages, so she could periodically revisit her daughter as she grew-up and had a family of her own, thanks to Relativity, maybe alienates them more than it brings them together. Perhaps, this might also be the case for Madison Kim, when her ailing father agrees to upload his brain to preserve his consciousness. Unfortunately, the Logorhythms Corporation is not a trustworthy steward of his uploaded intelligence in Craig Silverstein’s animated drama Pantheon, based on several Ken Liu short stories, which premieres today on AMC+.

Kim has had a rough time of it since her father David died, in a physical sense. His pal from Logorythyms convinced him to undergo the upload procedure, but Kim and her mother Ellen were told the process failed. Several months later, Kim starts getting emoji messages from someone who has personal family information. The angel-hacker also helps turn the cyber tables on the mean girls bullying her.

Convinced her father’s cyber-consciousness has been secretly imprisoned and exploited by Logorhythm, Kim reaches out to Caspian, an anonymous high school hacker and conspiracy monger with a keen interest in the company. However, unbeknownst to Caspian, Logorythym also has a sinister interest in him. In fact, he is part of a mysterious long-term project launched by Stephen Holstrom, the company’s late Steve Jobs-like founder.

Separately, none of the elements of Pantheon are entirely original, but the way Silverstein entwines and enmeshes them creates an extremely grabby story. The series delivers a fire-hose blast of paranoia, which maybe isn’t so unhealthy these days. We have seen plenty of online avatars before, but the way the show envisions the world of an uploaded intelligence is quite provocative and alarming. There are also subplots involving Indian programmers and tech tycoons that are extraordinarily dark and cautionary.