Groenaissance! Matt Groening to produce new show ‘Disenchantment’ for Netflix

(Disclaimer: this article contains all-caps levels of excitement. You may wish to wear earplugs)

“Disenchantment will be about life and death, love and sex, and how to keep laughing in a world full of suffering and idiots, despite what the elders and wizards and other jerks tell you.”

Strong words from Groening, a man who has always seemed the quiet, not-quite-benevolent wizard in the wings. His creations have shaped and dominated comedy for over two decades, even if over the years they have become beached, bloated versions of their former selves. His new project Disenchantment is already being compared to what one Guardian journalist dubbed the ‘emo absurdity’ of animated shows like Bojack Horseman and Adventuretime. It may be a bit premature to start comparing shows that don’t exist yet, but Mr McGuardian is not entirely off his mark. Rather than seeing these shows as emo-ly absurd however, it might be better to think of them as fantastic realism. The worlds of Horseman and Jake the Dog depict are fantastical and they revel in weirdness, but only to highlight the real and the banal. They are at their core satirical – enter Groening. The earlier seasons of Simpsons and Futurama crackled with social and political commentary, embedded in strange worlds, be it Springfield or New New York. They parodied the American sitcom format, withholding moralisation and yielding only the smallest, the most mundane victories for their protagonists. This isn’t to say they were devoid of sentimentality, remember when:

Became...

(Please, hold back your sobs until the the end of the article.)

At the heart of everything was an exasperation, a snide reflection of the real world rather than the arbitrary goofiness became the main comic anchor as the shows kept going. And going.

So call me optimistic, blindly loyal and impulsively over-hyped, but a fresh Groening show?! HOT DIGGITY DAFFODIL! We’ve been told a little to whet our appetites: it will take place in a dilapidated medieval fantasy world (as if the name Disenchantment weren’t enough to indicate a cynical twist on the fantasy setting) and our heroes will be, “hard-drinking young princess Bean, her feisty elf companion Elfo, and her personal demon Luci.” Plenty of Groening regulars are set to guest (John DiMaggio, Billy West, Maurice LaMarche and co.) but the main voice talent (Abbi Jacobson, Nat Faxon, and Eric Andre) are all new to the Groening repertoire.

Perhaps getting this excited over a TV show is childish, and maybe at best Disenchantment will spell a small beacon of laughter in a world of faceless, corporate injustice. A small victory you might say, but I’ll take it! Sadly it is not set to air on Netflix until 2018, so until then myself and others will have to cope, and contain our excitement somehow…

#Groening #Simpsons #Futurama #Disenchantment