Is Amazon learning? Its latest batch of Amazon Originals pilots is a cut above the last group—both on the adult and children’s side—with several shows that would make for enjoyable additions to the TV landscape. Here, we take a look at the pilots intended for kids.
Gortimer Gibbon’s Life On Normal Street: As if created on a dare to merge The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins novels, and Pan’s Labyrinth into a children’s series, Gortimer Gibbon’s Life On Normal Street arrives with a surprising amount of low-budget charm. The three elements it’s trying to force together shouldn’t really work in the same universe, but creator David Anaxagoras somehow makes everything play in this sweet, laid-back series that may be too low-key to gain serious kid attention. The key here is that Anaxagoras and his child stars don’t push the show’s fantastical elements too hard—those elements include a frog that may or may not have something to do with granting wishes. Instead, the show treats the fantasy as simply a natural outgrowth of life in the American suburbs. There’s also a charming throwback quality to the show, as Gortimer (Sloane Morgan Siegel) and his friends Ranger (Drew Justice) and Mel (Ashley Boettcher) have adventures that could have largely stepped wholesale out of Cleary’s books. There are places where the story seems almost too laid-back, and Siegel sometimes lets his moments slip too far toward the leisurely. But in its closing moments, Gortimer Gibbon feels like little else on kids’ TV right now.
Hardboiled Eggheads: Duane Capizzi’s animation career reaches back to the Saturday-morning heyday of The Real Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, episodes of which he scripted before bringing various Disney, DC, and Hasbro properties to TV. Hardboiled Eggheads is Capizzi’s first shot at working with characters of his own creation, but the show is a decidedly post-Phineas And Ferb affair. The eggheads are Kelvin (Jessica DiCicco) and Miles (Tara Strong), two playground Ned Brainards kept in check by their less absent-minded (and only?) friend, Pilar (Nika Futterman). The pilot expresses a brains-over-brawn philosophy, but that makes Kelvin and Miles—who spend a third of the episode deducing the source of an insectoid threat—oddly inert as heroes. Pilar is more dynamic, but in a self-defeating decision, she’s out of her league in the areas of her buddies’ expertise. Capizzi’s pop-culture-seeped past informs some decent riffs on The Fly from John DiMaggio’s evil Professor Zam, but for Hardboiled Eggheads to truly work, it needs crackle for more than four minutes per episode. (And it needs to not accidentally reinforce the notion that females have no interest in scientific or mathematic disciplines.)
The Jo B. & G. Raff Show: From part of the team that wowed toddlers (and bugged parents) with The Wonder Pets, The Jo B. & G. Raff Show concerns a show-within-a-show hosted by the eponymous bear-and-giraffe team. In the pilot, however, that vaudevillian showcase suggests that future installments might instill “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?” fidgets in less patient viewers. The Jo B. & G. Raff show is more about the journey than the destination, as adventurous G. Raff coaxes homebody Jo B. out of their small-screen domicile and into a submarine for an undersea excursion. The strengths here are the texture of the animation—giving the illusion that the leads are well-loved denizens of the playroom—and the jingle-like refrains of Emmy-winning Wonder Pets composer Larry Hochman. The earworms might grate on adult ears, but there are worse places to learn about compromise and fearlessness than a show that combines the gentle imaginativeness of Blue’s Clues with a framing device straight out of the old ABC The Bugs Bunny Show.