THE SNOOPY SHOW
Apple TV+, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: The first Charles Schulz TV show based on his beloved Peanuts comic strip was in 1965. It’s still the best holiday television special ever made, and so full of wit and spirit, and an actual message, that it works just as well today. This new series, bringing Snoopy front and center and presenting three brief episodes in each installment, is very light on the moralism, but it does very well recreating the spirit of the rest of the original. Offscreen teachers and parents still talk like horn solos, Snoopy still dreams of aerial duels with the WWI flying ace the Red Baron, Lucy still counsels psychiatric “patients” for a nickel, and Schroeder still plays Beethoven on his toy piano. The kid voices are cast to sound like the ones from 55 years ago – yes, you read that right: 55 years, coming on 56 – and best of all, the soundtrack music is composed to sound like, or at least evoke echoes of, Vince Guaraldi’s fabulous jazz score for those original Peanuts TV specials. So even though The Snoopy Show is new, it also serves as a sort of instant nostalgia. Look, there’s Pigpen! And Woodstock! And Peppermint Patty!...