Artist/animator/graphic novelist Lisa Hanawalt was behind much of the gorgeously bonkers production design for Netflix’s hit show Bojack Horseman, so it’s unsurprising that Tuca & Bertie—which she created, and which debuted on Netflix earlier this month—is a delightful, weird comedy. While Tuca & Bertie has been compared to Broad City, to simply compare it to another (albeit influential) show about two best friends does both shows a disservice; Tuca & Bertie is, no pun intended, its own animal.
Hanawalt’s artistic fingerprints are all over Tuca & Bertie; while eagle-eyed fans will recognize the duo from their appearance in Hanawalt’s 2016 collection Hot Dog Taste Test, the series is a good introduction to the quirky and hilarious things that tend to show up in Hanawalt’s work: plants, boobs, food, snakes, weird visual gags, and (of course) bird-human hybrids. The thing that Tuca & Bertie rightfully focuses on, however, is the friendship between the two lead characters; at the start of the series, Tuca (voiced by Tiffany Haddish) is moving out of the apartment that she’s shared with Bertie (voiced by Ali Wong) in the apartment they’ve shared for years, so that Bertie’s boyfriend Speckle (voiced by Steven Yeun, in a role so fitting that I now cannot imagine him in anything else where he is not an architecture nerd bird-man) can move in.
Tuca and Bertie have been best friends for a long time, and this latest development throws aspects of their best friendship into question even as it challenges them to grow as (bird) people. The two friends are also dealing with work stress—Bertie wants to follow her dream and become a pastry chef, and Tuca isn’t sure what she wants to do even as she keeps busy with underpaid, short-term gigs. There’s more to the show than those two storylines, however—which is an impressive achievement for a new show.
In just ten episodes, Tuca & Bertie manages to cover issues such as sexual harassment, trauma, longtime friendship, family issues, and sobriety in ways that are both inventive and tonally appropriate; Hanawalt has a particular gift for moving, emotionally resonant flashback sequences in which various characters’ histories are beautifully rendered in stop-motion animation, string, and puppetry. That the show grapples with heavy subjects doesn’t mean it takes itself too seriously; it is firmly grounded in a world where a musical number, sung by Bertie, about her anxiety—set in a grocery store, as Tuca is in the bathroom doing battle with “sex bugs”—is a development that makes perfect sense.
Haddish and Wong’s lead performances are outstanding—Haddish brings a sunny energy to the outlandish, extroverted Tuca, and Wong’s vulnerable Bertie is delightful. The guest voice actors are fantastic, too; Richard E. Grant as Bertie’s boss, Jenifer Lewis as Tuca’s judgmental aunt, and Reggie Watts as a creepy pastry chef are particular highlights.
It would be a mistake to brush off Tuca & Bertie as “Bojack but with women” or “Broad City, in the style of mid-1990s Nickelodeon,” because although those are somewhat accurate summaries, they both sidestep the richness and depth of this instant classic. I could watch hundreds more episodes of this show.