Season Review: Littlekenny Season One
Another Canadian sitcom gets an animated spin-off.
Overview:
Littlekenny is based on the popular Canadian live-action sitcom Letterkenny. The premise follows the antics of two best friends, Daryl and Wayne, in the rural Ontario town, Letterkenny. The animated spin-off features the main cast as children growing up in the small farming town.
In six short episodes, the animated series presents origins of how the two best friends came to meet, as well as other characters. Half of the episodes are “Littlekenny Problems” which features the two characters describing the difficulties of growing up.
Our Take:
These animated shorts are very much created for existing fans of the live-action series, Letterkenny. The original series, available on Crave TV, has gained notoriety and is even considered one of the best comedy series’ from Canada currently. For those not familiar with the show, it is basically a blend of Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys, featuring characters exploits in rural Canada. The series started on YouTube before gaining a distribution contract that will carry it for many more seasons. But, this animated spin-off is more of a connection to that original series than it is trying to gain new fans.
Without the context of the series, it is difficult to understand or care about what is happening. Half of the episodes involve the two primary kids making joke after joke about their struggles growing up, but even those are hard to land without adoring fans. The chapters that do hold a plot do not offer much in the way of explanation and can be hard to follow. And, with the season running about 15-minutes in total, there isn’t much time to bring it all together.
The animation itself is done quite well. It looks clean, and the illustrations are well done. However, it is challenging to tell the two main characters apart as they have the same shape, hairstyle, and voices. Additional characters are nearly impossible to understand whether that be from their voices or their strange dialect. And, there is a severe lack of settings which leaves you feeling like nothing happened at all in this show. It seems as though the most effort into making this came from the animators and everyone else was not that invested.
All in all, it would be nice if there were more positive things to say about this program. As a Canadian, you want to help promote local media and animation. However, the show was quite frustrating to watch due to the lack of effort from the voice actors and the minimal plot that doesn’t hold on its own. It is hard to say what devoted Letterkenny fans will think about the animated series, but it probably feels like an added little Easter egg instead of a viable program. If you are not familiar with the series, then don’t even bother trying to sit through this, but look up some of the creators older YouTube videos which can be pretty entertaining.
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