Long Story Short, Netflix’s funny new cartoon, is like a rich family novel

television review

Long Story Short is intricately plotted enough to reward a rewatch, but also easily followed the first time around.

Since the turn of the century, the greatest of television shows have often been talked about as the novels of our time.

But one area where TV writers’ rooms have rarely succeeded as well as novelists is in the realm of multigenerational family sagas.

While there are exceptions – arguably This is Us is one – authors, overall, do a better job of following a clan over decades, flipping back and forth between characters as kids and adults, telling the story of a place and time period in the process.

There are reasons why Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections screen adaptation has been stuck in development hell for a quarter of a century – starting with the