It’s like a cartoon slap in the face in some ridiculously funny setting in what is akin to a 1930’s or 40’s animation milieu. The style, the pace and the humour in the slapstick animated series The Cuphead Show is not really for kids as much as it is for the kid inside the grown-up. It’s nostalgic, it’s today, and it’s a bit overwhelming after binging. But jeez, it’s fun.
The Cuphead Show is based on the incredibly addictive and crazily popular video game Cuphead. It’s animated in the ye-olde style of cartooning’s golden age, when characters were drawn by people, frames and movement meticulously plotted, and computers and AI, well, they didn’t exist to do the creativity on behalf of people.
Classic animation in Cuphead
The series breathes life into the game’s naughty Cuphead and his more reserved brother Mugman in a show with a twisted sense of humour. The devil is there, too, and kettle grandfather Elder Ketttle and all the moments and movements from the game, but in a narrative that will appeal well beyond lovers of the game.
Now, Satan believes that Cuphead owes him his soul after the latter lost a game called Soul Ball, but his evilness keeps failing to get to the, well, teacup, to claim his prize. It’s visual, it’s ridiculous, and it’s seriously funny.
The Cuphead Show is binge-worthy, but best taken in a handful of episodes at a time, because it can become overwhelming and spoil the fun.
Not a thread of yawn in ‘The Rookie’ 7
Misadventures, action and just a lekker show all round is, of course, The Rookie.
Netflix has upped the ante and released the first six seasons on its platform. However, the seventh season is now streaming on Showmax, so hurry before they wipe the platform from the face of the earth.
The Rookie‘s new season offers everything that you’d expect from the show. It’s got a formula, the producers are sticking to it, but the storyline is interesting enough to ensure that you never get bored.
There’s not a thread of yawn in the new season, but, instead, more action, more drama, more funny and awkward moments.
What’s really nice about The Rookie is that, beyond the quality of the show, it’s a network production, not a streamer-funded work. That means there are well more than 8 eight or ten shows, there are eighteen in season seven. It makes it so much more satisfying from an audience perspective, because there’s just a lot more to enjoy.
If you have not started with The Rookie yet, add it to your list, because it’s cops-and-robbers in the Hill Street Blues and TJ Hooker tradition. It’s not method, it’s action, it’s fun with a sprinkle of humanness in between.
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‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ is back
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is back with a fourth season on Disney this week.
That is big news, because it’s the only watchable reality show about a troupe of women living the trope that’s been rinsed and repeated so nauseatingly often.
It’s in the Housewives Of whatever, The Mommy Club of Whatever and the already thin fabric of these shows should be ripping its producers’ new derrieres for serving up codswalloping mindlessness.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is not that different, but it is vastly different at the same time. You have to watch it to appreciate it.
‘The Amazing Digital Circus’
Lastly, for lovers of the brilliant Australian animated series The Amazing Digital Circus, there are new episodes out on Netflix.
The instalments get more intense as the show goes along, and if you have not started watching this work of abstract brilliance yet, give it a spin, because you’ll become addicted to its awkward bizarreness.
NOW READ: What To Watch: Netflix’s ‘Billionaires’ Bunker’ could have been better.
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