Zach Hadel’s and Michael Cusack’s “Smiling Friends” have announced the premiere date along with a sneak peek into the season. The co-creators Cusack and Hadel want adult animated comedy fans to start the new year with a smile. Animated by Princess Bento Studio, the “Smiling Friends” series is making its debut on Sunday, January 9, 2022.
The news about Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel’s Smiling Friends series in production was revealed in May 2021. Though all of us were hoping to get to see it in 2021, alas..January 2022 is not bad either. The hopes had been raised when Adult Swim had tweeted in May about the series coming this year!
Around 378 million of you told us to make Smiling Friends. So we’re making Smiling Friends with @MichaelRCusack and @psychicpebble and it’s coming this year. Yay!
45 minutes of 2D animated comedy series is coming to entertain after a waiting period of 21 months, the bizarre series is premiering on January 9 exclusively on Adult Swim. It will be the first animated adult comedy series of 2022 from the platform.
The pilot episode titled “Desmond’s Big Day Out” dropped on Adult Swim on 1st April 2020, with people assuming that it was an April Fools’ Day stunt from the channel. But slowly the popularity of the pilot crossed more than 7 million views on YouTube making it to be one of the most-watched episodes on AdultSwim.com.
Its quirky storyline was aimed to bring smiles to the faces and hearts of characters who are surrounded by deep, dark depression vibes. Needless to say, April 2020 was the right time to drop in when the world was thick into pandemic woes.
How many episodes will Smiling Friends have?
Including the pilot episode, creator Zach Hadel had earlier said that the wild comedy should have 8 episodes. Each one arriving on Adult Swim will be of 45 minutes duration.
What is the plot of Smiling Friends?
The plot of “Smiling Friends” is around the employees of a small company who have targets set to bring happiness to an eccentric world. One can correlate to each character as each one we come across in our daily lives. The protagonists are none other than pessimistic Charlie and star employee Pim. They have been allocated tasks to make calls to cheer up people from their mundane and sad lives.
Apart from these two, we also see characters of a much planned out Allan, the mysterious Glep, and the erratic billionaire Boss who has hired all these characters. Michael Cusack has lent his voice to Pim making it to be one hell of a show.
The reaction pouring on the internet is pure gold. Fans can’t get enough of Pim and Charlie and their quirky ways to bring an upward smile on the faces they come across.
Smiling Friends official trailer
Adult Swim has released a new trailer with an announcement of the date. One can see the “Happiness Spreaders” Charlie and Pim in the trailer. Charlie in yellow is the taller and meaner one. While the one in purple is Pim, lighthearted and short height.
One can also make out James Taylor song for the trailer which many did not expect and it all hyped them up. Zach once again proved that he is serious about what he says during his podcast sessions. He had said that he liked the voice cameos of random people or famous people in roles that you can’t really tell it’s them. Mike Stoklasa and the Wolfhards are good examples from episode 1. He also said on the podcast he wanted to get Chris Chan to do a voice.
Fans are going crazy on spotting worm in the trailer. In a Worms lobby chat with Chris, Zach had said that “we’re gonna put a worm in ep 2”. Zach is definitely spoiling us with the Worm Odyssey. Check it out below
The show will air on Cartoon Network from 10:00 pm until 6:00 am ET/PT in the United States. However, Adult Swim has yet not confirmed when it has plans to release on HBO Max, if not at launch then shortly after. Adult Swim must understand that there are very few people under forty who have cable. Also, there are only a few countries across the globe where the channel is streaming its adult animation shows. There needs to be an alternative to Adult Swim for fans to watch their favourite series.
Failing that, one can probably buy seasons off of services like Amazon Video or Microsoft Movies & TV, where they update almost immediately after a new episode airs. Not a perfect solution, but the options are there.
If you are new to the characters and the storyline, watch this 14-minute crackling humour on the channel. We are sure that the new episodes will lighten up the mood and maybe make you go bonkers, so make sure that you check out Smiling Friends on Adult Swim. Also, let us know if the trailer left you smiling!
9th January will be a busy day for many with Attack on Titan Season 4 Part 2 coming on Crunchyroll!. Share with us your experiences and what you are looking forward to!
