LITTLE DEMON Season One
To the Devil A Stroppy Teen
★★ 1/2
UK/US Disney+, streaming now (Originally broadcast in the US on FXX)
Showrunners Darcy Fowler,
Seth Kirschner, Kieran Valla
Cast Aubrey Plaza, Lucy Devito, Danny Devito, Lennon Parham
Imagine if Adult Swim had made a Rosemary’s Baby sequel as a 10-part grindhouse cartoon series, with the baby now a teenager and recast as a girl, and you’ve pretty much got Little Demon. Except it’s not on Adult Swim – it’s on Disney+. Walt must be spinning in his grave (except, as everyone “knows”, he was frozen).
There are some heavy hitters behind this series. It’s partproduced by the production company of Dan Harmon (Community/rick And Morty) and boasts voice talents such as Danny De Vito and Audrey Plaza in regular roles, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Brooks, Michael Shannon, Dave Bautista and Mark Ruffalo (as a horned bulldog) as guest stars.
It’s a high concept show: 13-year-old Chrissy Feinberg discovers that the reason why her mother has dragged her back and forth across the US all her life is because she’s on the run from Chrissy’s dad, who happens to be Satan. Now, with puberty hitting, her diabolical inheritance is bubbling to the surface, and dad feels it’s time to entice her to Hell.
This is bloody, sweary, grossapalooza stuff with a real “let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach to humour. For every great, edgy gag there are a couple of clunkers (honestly, on what level is a demonic quiz show audience repeatedly baying “F**k a corpse!” funny?). There are plenty of amusingly bat’s-arse images and concepts, but also far too many laboured and overly-desperateto-shock ones.
Some spirited vocal performances help to keep things watchable, and an arc plot of sorts adds a bit of depth to later episodes. But for the most part it’s a hell of a mess.
Dave Golder
Episode three features a cameo by a faun that looks like Philoctetes, who was voiced by Danny Devito in Disney’s Hercules.