The staff become universal in the move, funny “Long Story Short” | TV / Streaming

Raphael Bob-Waksberg left the shield of speaking animals in “Bojack Horseman” and “Tuca & Bertie” to deliver a deeply personal family animated sitcom entitled “Long Story Short”, a comedy of 10 episodes that plays more like a powerful short anthology than a traditional season of inductive television. With his writing team, Bob-Waksberg jumps chronologically into the life of the Schwoooper family, almost randomly passing from the character to the period and the period of time in each episode, telling autonomous stories that earn an additional resonance in the accumulation. I remember after the funeral of a beloved uncle when I was only a teenager, sitting in a back room and hearing his brothers and his nephews telling stories about him. “Long Story Short” has this energy, a melancholic but joyful tribute through comic narration to a family that may not belong to you, but it is not so far either.

Ben Stiller in this variation of “The Royal Tenenbaums” is AVI (Ben Feldman of “Superstore”), the oldest child in the Schwoooper clan, which also includes Shira (Abbi Jacobson of “Broad City”) and Yoshi (Max Greenfield of “New Girl”). We will check with these characters at different stages of their lives, seeing both a young AVI and a post-divorce; See Shira in a disastrous ball and as a mother; See Yoshi as an awkward troublemaker and become Orthodox Jew later in life. All these events are in the shadow of a figure which is powerful for narration even when it is absent, the matriarch Naomi Schwartz (Lisa Edelstein), wife of the genus Elliott (Paul Reiser). Naomi checks a few boxes from the stereotypical Jewish mother in a comedy, but Edelstein expresses her with such depth and Bob-Waksberg gives her an interiority as unexplored as when she died in episodes coming closer to our days where we can always feel her presence.

The Schwopers have others, important friends and children, including Avi’s wife, Jen (Angelique Cabral), Shira’s partner, Kendra (a wonderful Nicole Byer), the daughter of Avi Hannah (Michaela Dietz) and the silly friend of Yoshi Danny (Dave Franco). Again, writing is unpredictable in the way it will connect to tell a story about one of these characters. My favorite episode of the season is an unexpected story for Kendra, the kind of development anecdote that allows you to see someone in a different light. “Long Story Short” presents its casting then turns in their history just enough for us to have the impression of knowing them so much better when they are gathered these days in the eighth episode.

Co-animated by Shadowmachine, who worked on projects as diverse as “Tuca” and “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”, “Long Story Short” is not the most striking show on television. Sometimes it almost seems that he has a sufficiently simplified style of animation to be the sketches of one of the characters, which Shira could have scribbled in a memory book. It takes a while to get used to style, but it is deceptively simple, capable of opening in a way that live action could never do. The animation also serves time jumping, which would require the overhaul of actors in the voice of some of this “Irish” Dé-Gay Voodo if it was a traditional sitcom.

The act of voice is uniformly strong, in particular Feldman, Jacobson and Edelstein, which are all on the same comic wavelength. More importantly, the actors of the voice fade in the characters, never resembling celebrities who called it while in a recording stand. Greenfield, Byer, Reiser and Franco are also excellent. This is a case of a vocal ensemble clearly invigorated by a very good writing.

To be fair, part of this very good writing turns out to be too sitcomi, in particular with the folies of Schwopers adolescents, but there is empathy and tenderness that cannot be underestimated. So many shows cynically feel designed by writers who can barely bear their own characters; The team here loves schwopers in all their faults and wonders. You too.

Whole season projected for examination. Now on Netflix.