Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Siblings discover dad works off-planet in animated series
Sometimes, your parent’s real job is much more exciting than you could have ever imagined.
That’s what Lisa
(voiced by Priah Ferguson) and Sean (JeCobi Swain) discover in “My Dad the Bounty Hunter,” the animated series now streaming on Netflix, when they decide to sneak into the car of their dad, Terry (Laz Alonso), after he’s suddenly called in to work. It turns out when Terry is “out of town” for work, he’s actually off-planet taking on jobs as the bounty hunter Sabo Brok.
The 10-episode first season sees the trio travel across a number of planets in pursuit of Terry’s latest bounty, while navigating the strained relationship between father and daughter caused by his absences. Terry also discovers over the course of the season that his employer — a giant company known as the Conglomerate — is more than a little problematic.
Creators and executive producers Everett Downing and Patrick Harpin explain that the inspiration for the show is personal.
“I’d been working really hard in animation,” said Downing during a recent video call. “And at the time, my daughters were younger, and I just felt like I was spending so much time at work that I was missing this golden moment with them . ... And I was like, ‘Man, this would be something really great to put into a story.’ ”
“I was kind of coming at it from the kid point of view,” said Harpin, who explained that his father used to take him and his sister to work at a local Maine TV station since they couldn’t afford a babysitter. “We loved helping him out . ... So we were just pulling from our lives and wanted to make something (that) doesn’t pick sides.”
Downing and Harpin met while they were working at Sony Pictures Animation. After being in story meetings together for some time, the pair started meeting for coffee and discussing their creative aspirations and their love for movies such as “The Brother From Another Planet” (1984), “The Last Starfighter” (1984) and “Attack the Block” (2011).
Their initial pitch for what would become “My Dad the Bounty Hunter” was a movie. But after some feedback, they realized the idea would work better as a series.
“We were adamant (that) we didn’t want to do monster of the week and dad’s new bounty every week,” said Downing.
So the focus turned to breaking up the initial story into multiple installments.
“This story was a way that (Terry and Lisa’s) father-daughter conflict can be played out on this grander sci-fi scale,” said Harpin. “I love that it’s a series. We would never have gotten to be this specific or have this much creative freedom, I don’t think, if this was a big studio movie.”