(courtesy AppleTV+)
If ever any pop culture property had a hold on what a Christmas tradition is, it’s Peanuts.
The iconic and much-loved comic strip by Charles M. Schulz has become almost as well known for its exquisitely well-drawn and joyously nuanced television specials such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, which screened regularly after its initial release in 1965 and which came to be a key part of many people’s festive viewing traditions.
Now moved from broadcast TV to streaming, these specials have now been joined by animation like The Snoopy Show which continues the delightfully 2D-animation traditionally associated with all the Peanuts specials while also retaining the strip’s heartwarming commitment to touchingly and amusingly uncomplicated storytelling.
It’s a tricky thing to do with a franchise as deeply loved as this; stick too close to what’s come before and you end up looking like a relic of the past but go too modern and you’ll guy the very essence of what it popular in the first place.
The good news is that The Snoopy Show, like 2015’s The Peanuts Movie, has found a sweet spot somewhere in the middle, a little closer to the former dynamic than the latter, and in is doing has gifted us specials like the one released 1 December this year which features three short films that together add up to one wondrously lovely Peanuts piece of superlative storytelling.
In the first of the shorts, Peanuts (voiced by Terry McGurrin) and ever-faithful companion Woodstock (Rob Tinkler) set out to find the perfect Christmas tree, a seemingly simple task that is complicated by Snoopy’s quite understandable need to get one that looks just-so outside his kennel.
Full of comically slapstick visuals and some cute characterisation, the short, “Happiness is Holiday Traditions”, which also features Franklin (Caleb Bellavance) wishing everyone “Merry Christmas”, Lucy (Isabella Leo) amusingly leading carollers in her own ruthlessly determined way and Peppermint Patty and Marcie (Isabella Leo and Holly Gorski) respectively handing out hot chocolate and Sally (Hattie Kragten) explaining to her brother Charlie Brown (Tyler Nathan) to maximise Santa’s gift-giving potential, is all mischief and fun and very much in keeping with the feel of the comic strip but Snoopy in particular who gets away, and adorably too, with the kind off stuff the rest of us can only dream about.
(courtesy AppleTV+)
The second short, “Window Wonderland”, takes much of the Peanuts gang out to look at the Christmas window displays at the local department store, and while initially everyone is very disappointed that the same displays from last year have simply been rolled out again, Snoopy and Woodstock bring their own brand of charming mayhem to proceedings and give some imaginative life to the various tableau, enlivening the night and reviving everyone’s flagging festive spirits.
Finally in “Spike’s Old-Fashioned Christmas”, Snoopy and Woodstock set off with a seemingly bottomless sack full of a Christmas tree, decorations and even shovels of snow, which miraculously do not melt, and head to the desert to cheer up Spike, Snoopy’s brother, who appears to be having fairly drab and uninspired festive season.
The thing is that while Snoopy can’t believe Spike could be happy with sticking a basic wreath on a cactus, that’s precisely what Spike is, and after all of Snoopy’s elaborate cold weather efforts disappear in puffs of desert-destroying futility, with some hilarious browning out of trees and decorations, are bettered by Spike’s ability to do Christmas his own very particular, warm weather way.
It makes for a lovely reminder of the fact that Christmas comes with its own unique traditions for everyone, and that while you might love celebrating a certain way, the reality is that this is not necessarily the definitive way for everyone.
Where it does a beautiful job of collective inclusivity is the way it threads this quite lovely idea through all three shorts, uniting them as one perfectly-wrought special as it does so, and giving us a technicolour modern crisp special that well and truly channels the spirit that Schulz brought to all his deceptively simple storytelling.
“Happiness is Holiday Traditions” – and yes, we’re using the title of short #1 as a great titular shorthand for the whole special – is a delightful hug of a show that manages to modernise Peanuts while also retaining its decades-old style of storytelling in a way that makes you feel that you have your traditions and the wonder and happiness they bring but that you can also update them as needed without losing what made them special in the first place.
“Happiness is Holiday Traditions” is streaming now on AppleTV+ as part of The Snoopy Show.