I’m not sure where I was first tipped to the existence of Samuel, Émilie Tronche’s cute, charming series of slice-of-life shorts featuring a mopey French tween. Who am I kidding, it was likely in an industry rag that ran the announcement that Netflix had bought the American distribution rights and translated to English; there was maybe a time in my life where I would have been hip enough to have caught this on Arte, the Franco-German state TV channel where the shorts were first aired, but that’s not me now. I’m just a guy mooching off his mom’s Netflix account.

Tronche’s art style reminds of a lot of the work of Jeffrey Brown, the Chicago-via-Michigan cartoonist best known for his cycle of melancholy diary-comic memoirs from 2002-2005 (further Derek Lore: I was a big autobiographical graphic novel guy in college: Brown, Craig Thompson, Lucy Knisley, et al.). There’s more than a little Bryan Lee O’Malley in there as well, what with the big eyes and manga-like flourishes. It’s all pretty scratchy and spare, but Samuel, his friends, and their shenanigans are so well-written that it doesn’t register as twee affect. That’s the power of strong characters and a good story.

It’s also very well animated: there’s a tag scene early on that as dynamic a visual sequence I’ve seen in a recent cartoon. Even though the show is strongest in moments of stillness, where little more than a character’s eyes move, there are some bravura sequences across the 21 episodes. There are multiple show-stopping dance numbers, which are very fun as rendered in this style, and made that much cool if you know that Tronche is a former dancer.

Samuel also includes the best use of the thoroughly memory-holed Top 20 hit “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” by Eamon. Remember Eamon? I wonder what’s he’s up to these days. There’s lots of actually good music used/referenced in the show, too; dig this fan-curated playlist.

If you, like me, speak French, I implore you to seek out the original French-French dub; bust out the VPN if you have to. If you’ll settle for a Québecois dub, Télé-Quebec has you covered. If English is your only course of action, give your mom a call and ask her for the Netflix password.

#UR