Lebanon Has a Popular New Animated Web Series

Despite the highly-publicized backlash against political satire recently, the ever-increasing ease in producing content nowadays is too enticing to pass up, especially in the case of Lebanon’s new animated series, Beirut+ TV.

Courtesy of husband & wife team Toni Yammine & Maya Zankoul, the satirical show looks to skewer Lebanon and its TV programming, channels, and general famous faces in a fun and constructive way.

“My dream was for years to create an animated series like the Simpsons,” Zankoul said, describing her show, and its reasons for going web-based instead of broadcast. “The topic is Lebanon, so it’s very limited,” she explained. “This is why we decided to go for the Web, do something which will probably reach more people than TV, and the format of two or three minutes long each.”

Despite TV networks not yet being ready for this kind of a program, viewership is on the rise, thanks to some help from social media publicity.

“We promote it on Facebook and from Twitter we share on YouTube,” Zankoul said. “We take 15-second cuts from each episode that goes online every Wednesday and post them on Twitter and Instagram.”

With 16 episodes per season, there’s a lot of content to choose from. The latest, for instance, parodies the country’s real estate programming. It features a fictitious multi-million-dollar apartment development with a faux French moniker made to sound like a lawless Lebanese border region. Roy, the show’s resident reporter, ends up taking a bullet to the shoulder in the installment.

Another episode mocked entertainment news programs, and featured false rumors of a George Clooney-Amal Alamuddin divorce.

Zankoul, 28, and Yammine, 33, handle the script writing, and another team member animates it, with actor friends providing the voices, and Toni the music and sound effects.

Previously, the duo also co-founded Wezank, a company that makes “animated explainer videos” for clients in Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, France, Switzerland, and the United States.

“There was a demand in the market, I’m an illustrator and I love animation. My partner Toni works in sound design, production and music. If you mix both, you get video animation,” Zankoul explained.

This mutual love fuels the creators’ motivation to produce more content, as well as, according to Zankoul, the desire to make a mark on this world: “I hope Beirut+ TV becomes part of the pop culture.”

[via The Huffington Post]