Over the Garden Wall: Season 1

I took the plunge and bought Hulu for a month (comes with a free one!) in order to watch The Handmaid's Tale. And while I'm here I figured I'd check out some of what else they have. Here's an easy one to kick things off!

It's a ten-episode miniseries from Cartoon Network and it's something wholly unique and gorgeous. It's this quietly haunting animation, about two kids who get lost in the woods, and stumble upon oddity after oddity. It's not quite Salad Fingers creepy, or anything, but there's death and dread around every bend, like these fairy tales of old crossed with early 20th century Americana (steam boats, pies cooling on windowsills, and so on). There are talking animals and all kinds of supernatural ghostly spirits and such. But! These two kids are, for all intents and purposes, normal kids. They're brothers! (Actually, wow, this has a lot in common with the game Brothers, I'm just now realizing.)

Wirt's the older brother, voiced by Elijah Wood. Greg's the younger one, voiced (perfectly) by an actual little kid. He's maybe the best part of the show.

It's only ten episodes long, again, and each of those is only eleven minutes. So really, you're looking at a not-even-very-long feature film here; I banged it out in two nights. Didn't love the ending, to put my cards on the table here, but still very glad I looked into this and enjoyed its old-timey autumnal folksy charms.