When a new show gets a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score from two dozen critics, I’m going to check it out, and over the past two days, I have binged the one I just spotlighted in a recent piece.
That would be Long Story Short, the new animated series from Netflix that you could argue is its best comedy, animated or otherwise, since BoJack Horseman ended in 2020. And there’s a reason for that. Long Story Short is created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, who also created BoJack Horseman. Five years later, he’s able to show what he’s been working on, and it could actually be better than BoJack in its initial season here.
Unlike BoJack Horseman, it has a different animation style and its tone is not nearly as crude. Little swearing, little sex, no violence. A real TV-14 type experience, opening it up to a wider potential audience.
Unfortunately, right now, it does not have a wide audience, it seems. Despite being released on August 22, it has yet to chart on Netflix’s Top 10 shows list at all, when BoJack definitely used to. And it is certainly better than every series on the current list.
I binged Long Story Short over the course of two days, which is easy to do given its ten, 25-minute episodes. It’s the story of a family that spans the course of decades. The unique format gives us an out-of-order look at various members of the family, where the children have the widest range from being 5-9 years old to being middle-aged with families. You see their character development and fill in gaps as you go.
Long Story Short is the first time I’ve laughed out loud while watching a comedy in many years. I am somewhat jaded when it comes to the endless amount of streaming shows I watch, and almost none of them have produced that kind of uncontrollable reaction. BoJack was funny, in a dark way, but rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Long Story Short is.
The show features a voice cast you’ll recognize, including Veep’s Ben Feldman in the leading role, and New Girl’s Max Greenberg doing his best Tony Hale impression. The show is centered around the family’s mother, voiced by House’s Lisa Edelstein in an incredible performance that is probably the best of the series.
I have no idea if this show will survive from here. Word does not seem to have gotten out about the series yet, given the fact I’ve heard no one talking about it despite these high scores. If it hit the Top 10 list maybe that would change, but all I can really do here is strongly recommend it. Really, to everyone, as I think nearly every Netflix viewer can appreciate, animation fan or not.
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