Smiling Friends (2022)
- Directed by
- Michael Cusack, Zach Hadel
- Genre
- animated sitcom, black comedy television series, speculative fiction television series, adult animated television series, surrealist humor television series
- Country
- Australia, United States
- Length
- 3 seasons, 27 episodes
- Rated
- TV-MA
- Rating
- 8.5 of 10 from 443 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A small charity organization and its four employees try to make people smile. Their attempts at happiness often lead to strange and unexpected situations.
surrealabsurdfast-pacedwhimsicaloffbeatquirkychaoticcolorful
What happens
Smiling Friends is an adult animated sitcom created by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack for Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim. The show revolves around the surreal misadventures of a small charity and its four employees dedicated to spreading happiness. It utilizes a wide variety of different art styles and animation techniques, including stylized traditional animation, computer animation, rotoscoping, stop motion, Flash animation, and live-action. The pilot episode aired April 1, 2020, unannounced as part of Adult Swim's annual April Fools' Day event alongside the premiere of Cusack's other series, YOLO. On May 19, 2021, Adult Swim ordered a full season that was initially set to premiere in late 2021. A panel dedicated to the series was held during the Adult Swim Festival on November 12, 2021, where co-creator Zach Hadel mentioned the show would premiere "within a few months", pushing the release schedule ahead to 2022. The first season contains nine episodes, including the pilot and an 11-minute special. The first season eventually premiered on January 10, 2022, with Adult Swim airing all episodes of the season, except for the special, in one night despite initial plans for a weekly release. Smiling Friends received positive reviews from critics. It was renewed for a second season on February 9, 2022. The season premiere aired on April 1, 2024, with the rest of the season beginning to air on May 13. On June 13, 2024, Adult Swim renewed the series for a third season. The third season was previewed at Annecy on June 11, 2025. On the same day, it was announced the series was renewed for an additional fourth and fifth season. The third season premiered on October 5, 2025. Despite being renewed for two more seasons, in February 2026, Hadel and Cusack announced in a video that the series would end after its third season. They attributed the series' abrupt conclusion to burnout, a shared belief that the show had run its natural course, and expressed concern that if they continued creating episodes that there would be a drop in quality. Despite this, they did not entirely rule out the possibility of the series returning for a special or another season in the future. The final two episodes of the third season were released on April 12, 2026. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
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How Not to Draw (2022)- More like this series, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.