There is so much great modern animation on television and streaming platforms.
Shows like Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Bojack Horseman, and South Park, not to mention Centaurworld which was a highlight of 2021 for this reviewer, sparkle with incisive writing, sharp humour, pitch-perfect, fully-rounded characters and a sense of time and place so palpable you swear it must exist somewhere in the real world.
They are in short a delight; to this illustrious list, which really is considerably longer than this review allows for, The Great North, a show that embodies all of the laudatory attributes of their compatriots in the genre with the added joy, and it can’t be described as anything but joy, of a beating heart of love, family, belonging, acceptance and inclusion, so big and furiously loving in its execution that you usually walk away from each episode not only remembering one or another of an endless stream of well-timed, clever gags (all character-driven) but feeling like you’ve just been given a great big hug.
A hug so enveloping and immersive that it is able to beat away the COVID blues, mollify the climate change anxieties which are legion and growing and remind that war might be everywhere right now in all its brutal, horrific cruelty, but that it is not, and has never been the whole story of humanity.
Twee though it might sound like paper, The Great North celebrates love and belonging with such enthusiasm that it’s hard not to get swept up in the idea that for all our flaws and faults, humanity is damn good at loving when it sets its mind to it.
So well does The Great North do its gloriously dysfunctional but loving thing that this reviewer gushed, yes gushed when sharing some reasonably positive thoughts on the first season of the show.
“What is so wonderful about The Great North, apart from almost everything (yes, there is a real chance of gushing in the offing), developed by Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin & Wendy Molyneux & Minty Lewis – the Molyneux sisters have written for Bob’s Burgers since 2012 – is that manages by a miraculous gift of creative alchemy to be both gloriously silly and intensely heartfelt without either element ever once coming close to cancelling out the order.”
The Great North, set in the perpetually snowy environs of Lone Moose, Alaska, is that kind of show – winningly earnest and sincere and committed with every fibre of its animated being to celebrating how much the Tobin family, led by dad Beef Tobin (Nick Offerman) and kids Judy (Jenny Slate), her gay twin brother Ham (Paul Rust), married older son Wolf (Will Forte) and wife Honeybee Shaw (Dulcé Sloan) and the youngest, bear-onesie wearing Moon (Aparna Nancherla), LOVE each other.
The love is unquestioning, its unconditional, its inclusive and while it’s tested at times and wears a little thin – in episode eight of season two, “Good Beef Hunting Adventure”, this distancing is remedied in gloriously quirky but heartfelt fashion when the siblings and partners are sent on a wild adventure by Beef to find each other again – it’s always find its way back to hearth and home.
What works so well with The Great North, and is on full heartwarming display in this season’s first half, is the way in which the team behind the show neatly balances the sincere with the hilariously idiosyncratic.
Each family member is happily and acceptingly odd, and the most outrageously OTT things are taken as gospel in a family where weirdness and strangeness are simply taken as a part of the familial landscape, swallowed up in the overall inclusivity of a family that is there for each no matter what.
The thing is that no matter how strange the storyline might be, and how trippily they are animated at times, there is always a tremendous amount of humanity and heart behind it.
Take episode “Brace/Off Adventure”, in which Judy is excited, nay THRILLED, to the point of singing a gushing song of appreciation, to see her dentist who is, to her mind, the best thing since sliced bread.
She loves the guy, and quite apart from the absurdity of the fact that most people do not love their dentist (poor dentists),the series has a great deal of fun with how much Judy looks forward to her appointments.
It’s quirky as hell, helped along by am hilarious musical number where Judy is kidnapped by her teeth, but behind all of the surreality of the episode, there is a beautiful thread about sixteen-year-old thread about Judy grappling with what it means to get older when her dentist says it’s time for her braces to come off.
She’s excited by this but also terrified too, and much of the episode, packed with all kinds of very funny oneliners and jaunty quips, is devoted to exploring, with empathy and understanding, what it’s like to reach the point as a teenager when adulthood looms.
And yes, even when The Great North goes full core silly in episodes like “The Yawn of the Dead Adventure” in which the undead may or may not have taken over the kids’ school, and Wolf has to replace Beef’s shirt by eating way too many shrimp that is good for anyone, there is always a sincere and love for others that wins through.
Simply out, the show is happy to wear its heart on its sleeve even as it lets its freak flag fly, balancing the loveliness of Beef’s close friendship with father-figure Delmer (Aloysius Hootch) in “Wanted: Delmer Alive Adventure” with embellished stories that stretch the bounds of incredulity, or an inverted Agatha Christie mystery involving poop and disappearing pizza deliveries in “Skidmark Holmes Adventure”, it always returns to the humanity at the heart of every single story.
You will laugh at the hilarity of Ham combatting poor hygiene conditions at the town’s favourite restaurant (“Tasteful Noods Adventure”) and glory with festive happiness and much giggling at the weirdness of a Tobin Christmas in “Dip the Halls Adventure” but you will always feel like you’ve just spent time with family.
What makes The Great North such a buoyant treat to watch, and with a consistency that is admirablly impressive, is that it never loses this balance between the absurdly funny and the heartfelt sincere, infusing it with the sort of warm reassurance that comes from being with people you love more than other, that are family.
You honestly feel all warm and fuzzy inside all the time, even when the show is going all-out bat-s**t crazy (in always the best and loveliest of ways) because The Great North never forgets that while silly surreality, both visual and verbal, is a funny bone-pleasing joy beyond compare, and the show exercises it endlessly and well, what we want most is to belong, to feel loved and included, something the show gives us in heartwarming spades, along with soggy gingerbread towns, offbeat Thanksgivings and a delightful sense that we will always be welcome to spend time with Tobins because they love being with each other.