This Apple original documentary about Peanuts creator Charles M Schultz and his beloved comic strip combines animation, interviews, and archive footage to reveal where Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the gang came from.
The answers aren’t that surprising. Schultz was a clever kid but also a bit of a loner who found solace in drawing. Even when he served during WW2 he carried on drawing and, when he returned to civilian life he decided that creating comic strips was what he wanted to do. Much like Charlie Brown himself, Schultz didn’t give up despite five years worth of rejection.
And so, via narration from Lupita Nyong’o and interviews with people who knew and worked with him, plus celebrity fans like Drew Barrymore, Billie Jean King (the inspiration for Peppermint Patty), and Paul Feig, we come to learn how all of the characters were a part of the man himself.
There are some lovely strands that examine the social implications of Schultz’s openness to what was going on around him in American society and his desire for Peanuts to portray equality. His portrayal of girls is definitely from a feminist position and the impact of Franklin, a black child in a ‘white’ cartoon strip, was revolutionary. And the interviews with the man himself are delightful, moving even as we approach the end of his life. It’s nicely presented too as a kind of continuous comic strip of its own.
It’s all framed in a vaguely unsatisfying cartoon narrative which sees Charlie Brown having to write an essay about who he is, and looking to his friends to find the answer. That narrative doesn’t quite work but it’s a minor quibble for what is, essentially, an hour-long piece of TV that seems to be aimed mainly at a younger audience.
WHO ARE YOU, CHARLIE BROWN? is out now, available on Apple TV+
