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Review: HBO’s “˜Animals’ Is One of the Most Unique and Interesting Shows on Television2 min read

2 February 2016 2 min read

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Review: HBO’s “˜Animals’ Is One of the Most Unique and Interesting Shows on Television2 min read

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Animals might be the weirdest, craziest, most interesting television show in a long time. The new HBO show feels like someone took a funny clever animated short film from the Sundance Film Festival and adapted it into a television series. The result feels like nothing else on television.

And maybe that’s why HBO was interested in airing this series, which was produced by indie darlings the Duplass brothers. HBO has made their dent in the universe by pushing the boundaries of what is considered television.

Last night I was invited to a premiere screening of two episodes of the new HBO animated series. The show is the brainchild of Mike Luciano and Phil Matarese, who came up with the idea while they were working for an advertising firm in New York City. Mark Duplass saw an early version of what would become the show, and invited the duo to come to Los Angeles where they would be given a place to stay and resources to produce the television show.

The plan was to produce a handful of episodes before trying to find a television network to air them. They were able to fill the episodes with a fantastic ensemble of their comedy actor friends, including Adam Scott, Aziz Ansari, Jenny Slate, Lauren Lapkus, Shawn Waynes, Ben Schwartz, Danny McBride, Molly Shannon, Nick Kroll, Rob Corddry, Jon Lovitz, Paul Scheer, Kumail Nanjiani, Matt Walsh, Melanie Lynsey and many many others. Shortly after early cuts of the first episodes were screened at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, the series was picked up by HBO. The premium cable channel ordered two full seasons of the series, which shows a lot of confidence.

The series tells the story of animals living in New York City, who have the same problems and conversations of the city’s human counterparts. I screened episodes two and five. One told the story of a pigeon who takes steroids in an effort to meet the challenge of another pigeon in a race to “the big green lady with the idea cream cone” (the Statue of Liberty). The other episode followed a rat who takes credit for the invention of clothing to impress a girl. While each episode has a main self-contained storyline, there are also short vignettes that feature other animals in the city. A human plot provides a connected through line for the entire season, although it seems like that storyline is a very minor part of the show in the grand scheme of things.

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via: Slashfilm

Image Credit: HBO

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