Unlike the sad boy Charlie Brown or the always angry Lucy, Snoopy lives his life the way many of us would wish: with unbridled joy and without limits.
Photo: Apple TV +
The Snoopy Show understands that Snoopy is not a mere cartoon beagle or the pet of the famous perpetual failure Charlie Brown. He is a canine substitute for the power of imagination.
The new series, which debuts today on Apple TV + (a platform that, coincidentally, now broadcasts many of the old Peanuts specials and films), consists of six 22-minute episodes, each a trio of themed shorts that follow Snoopy like him repeatedly visualizes itself in more fantastic scenarios out of sync with the banal ones that really surround it. Most of the time, he has Woodstock, his BBFF – who is the birds’ best friend forever – by his side.
In some of the most watched animated Peanuts classics, Snoopy’s story has been storyline B – his battle with the Red Baron is secondary to the main action in It’s the Big Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and his entry into a holiday decoration contest acts as a sidebar to Charlie Brown’s Christmas anguish in Charlie Brown Christmas. But although Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and the rest are certainly presented in The Snoopy Show, Snoopy is arguably the star, the A to the B. of everyone else. This is not only welcome, but perhaps even necessary now. Unlike the sad boy Charlie Brown or the always angry Lucy, Snoopy lives his life the way many of us would wish: with unbridled joy and without limits.
“I don’t understand you, Snoopy,” Lucy tells him in the first episode of The Snoopy Show. “With all the problems in the world, you still dance. Where’s the fear? Where’s the dread? “
Snoopy does not know fear. He is not bothered by dread, not even in early 2020. While the existential and most melancholy aspects of Charles M. Schulz’s beloved Peanuts are represented here and there in The Snoopy Show – everyone still pays five cents to get Lucy’s psychological advice, Charlie Brown still can’t fly a kite to save his soul – this charming Apple TV + leans more towards the Happiness is a hot puppy franchise side. It contains moments that are beautiful and sweet; at one point, in the story of the origin of the Snoopy / Woodstock relationship, Snoopy misses Woodstock so much that he carelessly carves an image of him out of beer foam. Many of the shorts celebrate Snoopy’s ability to transport himself out of reality. While trying to deliver a forgotten lunch to Charlie Brown’s sister, Sally, Snoopy crawls across a huge desert in his mind, which is actually a sandbox on an elementary school playground under his furry body. When Snoopy sees an aquarium at a sale, he imagines diving into tropical waters with that aquarium conveniently acting as an underwater helmet.
The animation follows the spirit of classic Peanuts specials, as it was in 2015 The Peanuts Movie. (Craig Schulz, one of the sons of Charles M. Schulz, is among the executive producers, and The Snoopy Show is animated by WildBrain, which owns 41 percent of Peanuts Worldwide.) As voiced by Terry McGurrin, Snoopy still speaks in his strident and staccato language, although it sometimes sounds like a small a little bit like a Minion. Overall, though, this is the new Peanuts that looks a lot like the old Peanuts, with lots of nods to the comic book, the famous holiday specials (there’s a Halloween episode and more than a tip for the famous Charlie Brown Christmas dance crowd), and even more obscure offers like It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown.
All of these references point to another reason why The Snoopy Show exists, and this is a nostalgia game that will help Apple TV + leverage its other Peanuts content. This is not just an Apple thing. Each streamer is trying to explore our childhood pop culture favorites for the benefit of the audience. HBO Max launched the new Cartoon Looney Tunes, creating a potential portal for many Looney Tunes shorts in the HBO Max catalog. Peacock gave us an update Saved by the gong, a reminder of all the elders Saved by the gong content in your library. Disney +, a platform whose bases were built on the value of nostalgic IP, brought us the new Muppets now last year and is resurrecting The Muppet Show in full at the end of this month. Each streamer hopes to seduce us into becoming subscribers, attracting us with the fictional friends we fell in love with as children.
To make the strategy work, however, these programs must not seem strategic. They should feel part of some circle in TV life. The Snoopy Show succeeds in that effort. It is something that parents will enjoy sharing with their children, while being reminded of their own most innocent times, spent in front of the living room television looking at excited Snoopys from their past. It is a new Peanuts security blanket, wrapped in a comfortable and familiar Peanuts security blanket. It is a reminder that happiness was, and still is, a warm puppy.