Season Review: Allen’s Pole Season One

The pole vault.

Allen’s Pole takes place in 1897 and follows the adventures of an idiot explorer by the name of “Lord Allen Quicks” who wants nothing more than to discover the North Pole. Joined with him is his nanny “Fran” and an annoying biographer by the name of “Sandy Pants”. As expected, staging a treck through the Arctic has all sorts of adversarial issues like whales, polar bears, and assassins and during the course of the five episodes timed at three minutes apiece, we get to see all of them. Fortunately, we go get to our final destination only to find out that we’re just gonna go to Antarctica next.

This paper cut-out style series has a throwback Flash animated feel to it with quirky characters and a simple premise that probably could pass as a single episode for any other series. For some reason, the VRV/Mondo streaming service decided to space the episodes for release every two weeks and I’m not sure Allen’s Pole is the correct show to be making people wait extra long for an episode. The show itself is not enough for a VRV/Mondo subscription but it passes because it isn’t a bad series. Probably better equipped for a social platform than a streaming service, Allen’s Pole offers short enough passes at the Arctic without worrying about frostbite.