Crazy irreverent humour and stop-motion animation
With violence, swearing and simulated sex, series definitely not for kids
You probably don’t know the face of Canadian actor Tara Strong, but it’s likely you or your children have heard her voice in shows like “The Powerpuff Girls,” “DC Super Hero Girls” or “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.”
Best not introduce the kids to her latest animated series, though. In Hulu’s “Crossing Swords,” the characters get up to things that would make pony Twilight Sparkle blush.
“When they first pitched the show, they really had me at the title … it was just a total double entendre from the start,” said Strong, who has an Internet Movie Database page of mostly animated credits as long as your leg, never mind your arm. (As for the double entendre, you can google it.)
Strong, who got her start in Toronto, describes her character, Coral the Pirate Queen, as “a badass, foul-mouthed crazy person who’s just so much fun to play.” “Crossing Swords” comes from the producers of stop-motion sketch comedy “Robot Chicken” and Strong says she “knew it would be this high quality stop-motion animation mixed with this crazy irreverent humour … You know, this is not ‘My Little Pony’; this is not ‘Rugrats’ … we get to do and say things that we would never get to do in daytime animation.” You can say that again. “Crossing Swords” is set in medieval times and features a squire (an apprentice knight voiced by Nicholas Hoult) who tries to do good in the world despite being surrounded by a selfish, greedy, horny bunch of courtiers. The 10-episode series subjects its peg-doll characters to various forms of violence, including a self-circumcision, and there is plenty of swearing and simulated sex, not to mention fart and poo jokes.
It also winks at everything from “Game of Thrones” to Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in “A Star Is Born,” to the “Karen” meme and the election of Donald Trump.
Speaking of “Thrones,” Seth Green, an executive producer of
“Swords,” said he’s always up for comedically exploiting the popularity of something like the HBO series.
“It just made us all laugh to see this incredibly serious time period, these very serious themes and ideas, but juxtaposing the most mundane or even R-rated of circumstances,” said Green, who voices Blinkerquartz, the kingdom magician, who doesn’t know anything but sleight of hand tricks.
“I had a hard time watching ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” added Tony Hale (“Veep,” “Arrested Development”), in a separate Zoom interview. “I remember watching the first show of ‘Game of Thrones’ when they pushed that kid out the window. Yeah, I can’t … But there’s something with stop motion that doesn’t feel so obviously real.”
That being said, production company Stoopid Buddy Stoodios has gone to great lengths to make the characters and sets look like something you could pick off a toy-store shelf of a bygone era.
“Pretty much everything is made out of wood,” said “Swords” co-creator and director John Harvatine IV. “Everything was handmade and built in our studio.”
Fellow creator Tom Root said they have about 25 animators and 30 mini sound stages to house the sets. It takes one animator a day to do about 10 seconds of stop-motion footage and about two weeks to get enough raw seconds for an episode.
“To shoot one minute would take one animator like six days, 10 seconds a day,” he said.
“The cinematography is taken seriously and the angles and everything,” added Harvatine. “It’s meant to make it look like you’re actually in this world.”
The actors were suitably impressed.
“Getting to watch the animators, and how they create and present this show and shoot it is something that is just incredible and looks beautiful onscreen,” said Hoult. Juxtaposing that with “this very crude, funny, bizarre humour and then putting that on these cute peglike people, but shot beautifully, it’s really fun.”
“Fun” was a word that came up often during the interviews, which included Adam Ray, who plays Patrick’s brother Ruben the Rogue, a kind of anti-Robin Hood; Breckin Meyer, who plays his father Glenn; Alanna Ubach, who’s Queen Tulip; Adam Pally, Patrick’s fellow squire and best friend Broth; and Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays mean drill sergeant Meghan.
“I’d never been a part of something that had stop animation, so I was really excited about that,” said Hale, who plays Patrick’s brother Blarney. “And it’s just fun. When they said, ‘Yeah, he’s an alcoholic clown who is kind of a disaster and a disgrace to the family,’ I was like, ‘Game on, let’s do it.’ ”
The hope, of course, is that viewers have fun, too, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Your total world view is being reshaped,” said Green. But “it’s important to take breaks, to remember that laughter is a thing that’s not just possible, it’s necessary. And so even allowing ourselves 22 minutes to kind of regroup and not think of the severity of the circumstances helps prepare you for all the work to come.”
Added Pally: “I don’t know if there is such a thing as the exact right show for the pandemic, but I think … escapist humour and absurdist humour is something that can maybe be a respite for people during a dark time.”
“Crossing Swords” debuts Thursday at 10 p.m. on CTV Comedy Channel and Crave.