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How BoJack Horseman and The Good Place changed comedy forever

With their penchant for puns and bittersweet humour, the hit shows, both ending this week, explored humanity’s big existential questions

As the first month of 2020 draws to a close, two things hang in the balance. One is the fate of the whole of humanity; the other is the fate of one rather damaged cartoon horse. On the surface, glossy sitcom The Good Place and acerbic animation BoJack Horseman do not have much in common. But with their final episodes dropping this week, the bracket of “cerebral TV comedy” is losing two shows that have uprooted expectations and shrewdly asked questions of what it means both to be good and to be happy.

Neither show is an easy sell: one a high-concept comedy about moral philosophy set in the afterlife; the other an anthropomorphic satire of celebrity culture centred on a Hollywood has-been horse reckoning with his own unhappiness. But both became critical and word-of-mouth successes, providing escapism, wit and warmth, not to mention an unexpected penchant for puns, from The Good Place eateries such as Sushi and the Banshees to BoJack’s endless riffs on celebrities, like Quentin Tarantulino and Cindy Crawfish.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/314ECiq
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