One Of The Best New Netflix Shows Of 2025 Has A Brilliant, Brutal Twist

Raphael Bob-Waksberg more or less reinvented adult animation when he created "BoJack Horseman." Sure, much like another adult animated show that debuted around the same time, "Rick and Morty," "BoJack" dabbled in absurdism and experimentation. But the thing that made Bob-Waksberg and Netflix's groundbreaking cartoon about a talking horse unique was the way it tackled drama. Where "Rick and Morty" would go on to influence a decade of irreverent comedy, nihilism and parody in animation, "BoJack Horseman" was a mature, nuanced dramedy that featured complex characters and difficult subject matter. On top of all that, it was a biting satire of the entertainment industry driven by an antihero protagonist as compelling as Walter White or Tony Soprano (only animated and, again, a horse).

Thanks to its success, "BoJack Horseman" also wound up paving the way for more dramatic American adult animated shows — a format that had previously been synonymous with "The Simpsons" and similar sitcoms for decades. In the wake of "BoJack," we got series like "Castlevania" and "Arcane," as well as the excellent "Undone" and "Pantheon." These were shows that combined more dramatic storytelling with action, fantasy-horror, and sci-fi, allowing them to experiment with both their format and the larger medium of animation in different ways, all the way down to their runtimes.

Now, Bob-Waksberg is back with another animated show all about family trauma ... only without the talking animals this time. The series is called "Long Story Short," and it follows the Schwooper siblings from childhood to adulthood and everything in between (their joys, sorrows, triumphs, and failures alike). It's also the best new cartoon series of 2025 so far, with the first episode alone (which was shown to those in attendance at the 2025 Annecy Animation Festival) featuring a brutal yet brilliant twist straight out of Dan Fogelman's "This Is Us."

"Long Story Short" is a family sitcom in the vein of "King of the Hill." Of course, this is still a Bob-Waksberg show, so there's plenty of family trauma to go around ... or, as he put it during a presentation at Annecy, "small 't' traumas." The show focuses not on how we're ruined by our families but how experiences in our childhood affect us and resonate with us years later. Such is the case in the first episode, which centers on Avi Schwooper (Ben Feldman) as he introduces his girlfriend Jen (Angelique Cabral) to his family during his youngest brother's bar mitzvah. Immediately, shenanigans and hilarity ensue.

What makes the animated series unique from the get-go is its use of time-lapse storytelling. "Long Story Short" takes place during several different periods of time, following the Schwooper siblings as kids, teenagers, and adults alike. The idea, according to Bob-Waksberg, was to get audiences to emotionally invest in the series' characters the way they would after watching them for eight or nine seasons, only with far fewer seasons comprising a small number of episodes. "Boyhood" and the ending of "Six Feet Under" were also sources of inspiration in that they, too, show characters changing over several years in a relatively short amount of screen time.

The structure of the first episode of "Long Story Short" (which jumps forward in time more than once, combined with the way its episodes take place in different time periods, brings to mind "This Is Us" and how that show used time as a way to both develop its characters while also introducing plot twists. Indeed, the series' first episode not only establishes the traumas its characters have gone through and how their childhoods have impacted them, but it also has a phenomenal twist straight out of the greater Dan Fogelman playbook (which he used again for this year's phenomenal "Paradise").

Obviously, it's too early to compare "Long Story Short" with "BoJack Horseman" as a whole, but the former's first episode alone makes for a fantastic half-hour of TV and a very promising start to what could be another nuanced, emotionally complex, and otherwise hilarious animated show.

"Long Story Short" premieres August 22, 2025, on Netflix.