Bubble IE Season Review: Ends Meet

This show is either a successful, true-to-life animated drama realistically depicting urban Irish life, or it is a failure of a comedy.

The accents, the animation, the dialogue – you could well believe you were observing the actual lives of an everyday family of an unemployed single father living with his grandfather and his son in inner-city Dublin. And those of you who have had occasion in real life to witness the dizzyingly witty exchanges between a rather dull father and his six-ish-year-old son might perhaps be prepared for the side-splitting ripostes that this show offers. Though I did laugh at one point during episode 6.

It has been suggested to me that the show should be cut some slack because it is a low-budget Irish show. Some slack might be deserved in that regard for animation or voice actors – but I don’t feel slack is needed there – those fit with the show quite well. A low budget is, however, not an excuse for unfunny writing for two hours’ worth of footage. Understandably, fewer writers mean fewer ideas, but it’s not as though the show is in its twentieth season with a sole writer who has finally burned out and cannot afford to hire new writers with new ideas – this is two hours’ worth of material. Don’t get me wrong – the writing is not unrealistic, and it flows well. The main characters are very well developed, and the show tackles multiple topical issues – or at least, acknowledges their existence – the short runtime does not leave much room for navel-gazing. It is entirely possible that it might provoke some thoughts for some people – the show is even a little poignant at points. My only gripe is that it is simply devoid of jokes for the most part. Being animated does not necessarily make a show funny. Nor does it need to, granted – there’s nothing wrong a short animated drama – but if you are looking for laughs you may be disappointed.

I was, I admit, so unamused by the alleged comedy that I began to fear that I was missing something – perhaps the part of my frontal cortex responsible for reacting to humour – so I asked a few friends to watch some episodes. None of them found it funny either. Again, of course, this is not to say that the show was without merit – simply misrepresented, perhaps.

If you do not have time to get involved in a Dublin-based soap like Fair City – perhaps the multiple storylines and long episodes are too much for you to bear – or if you prefer your television dramas to be animated, or if you need a cartoonish dilettante’s touch to make you aware of issues like depression, moral responsibility, and medication abuse, then this may very well be the perfect show for you.