English Dub Season Review: The Bizarre Stories of Professor Zarbi Season Three Part One

The Canadian affiliate to everyone’s favourite mature-themed animation network, Adult Swim Canada, has been relatively quiet when it comes to releasing homegrown content. In the few years it has been established, Adult Swim Canada has proven to be not much more than a carbon copy of its larger American brother. Aside from the exciting Doomsday Brothers, the nationwide network has only released one other Canadian-made original program, The Bizarre Stories of Professor Zarbi.

More honestly, Professor Zarbi was not even intentionally created for the Canadian network. Instead, the paranormal sitcom was developed in Quebec for the province’s French-speaking night-time block on Teletoon.

Although, the English dub of the French series has created some wonkiness. The intended 22-episode first season was broken up into two for Adult Swim Canada. And the sneaky third season quietly made its way to English-speaking Canada earlier this year with a limited 5-episode run.

As minimalist as the latest season of The Bizarre Stories of Professor Zarbi may be, the few episodes are a significant upgrade from the show’s previous run. Mainly, the packaging is relatively unfamiliar. Formerly Zarbi episodes included two quarter-hour stories, with only the rarest of episodes offering larger ongoing plots. However, this five-episode third season offers entire half-hour storylines.

Further exclaiming the differences between this new and improved Professor Zarbi is the direct parodies involved. Early seasons featured more classic monster plots, including werewolves, ghost pirates, and the odd alien appearance. These five new pieces are more culturally relevant spoofs of famous film franchises, including The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars.

Yeah, you read that right. The Bizarre Stories of Professor Zarbi went full out on a Star Wars parody. Of course, with significant twists to make the story unique. Chiefly, the evil empire replaces its stormtroopers with vampires, and the man in black heading it all is a force-powerful Vlad Vader. Surprisingly, the story hits all the significant notes of A New Hope. And the garlic-hating vampire twist makes the premiere episode more enjoyable than anything Zarbi has done before.

The follow-up episode for season three delivers just as hard. The episode offers a spoof of Lord of the Rings, with some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themes interjected to make it even more potent. How that works is worth watching for yourself. Although the crossover is surprisingly seamless, especially with giant poop mutants replacing the dastardly orcs (or Foot Clan, depending on how you look at it.)

The next couple of episodes maintains the new level of franchise rip-offs with connections to Monsters Inc and The Matrix. Decent in their own right, though they are not of the same calibre as the other episodes in this five-piece collection.

Finally, the season finale tops things off with a Jurassic Park parody that sprinkles in elements of the Fantastic Beasts franchise. A clever concept that pays off big time when things go wrong at Fantastic Park. And it is a heck of a way to end the series if it happens to be the end of things for Zarbi.

Most notable is the ambition these new episodes go through. The Bizarre Stories of Professor Zarbi has always been impressive visually with its unique art style. But in these five episodes, things get more extensive than ever before. The premiere Star Wars spoof, which includes spaceship battles and a version of a Death Star, is made clear that the creators were no longer playing around. And it is maintained throughout the new episodes that it almost feels like a different show.

Almost.

Unfortunately, there are still some significant blemishes to Professor Zarbi that will hold it back from becoming an international sensation. The humour remains relatively immature, with poop and fart jokes being the show’s primary source of laughs. It would be great if the series was aimed at a younger demographic. But the mature rating does not fit the preteen humour.

Still, with the level the show has stepped up to, there are high hopes for another return to this paranormal anthology. There is no questioning that we would prefer five episodes of this calibre once a year over the 13-episodes of sub-standard programming that we could have received. There is a lot of creative juice behind Professor Zarbi, and it could easily produce many more adventures such as these. But at this point, there is no guessing what will happen to this little Quebec series.