Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Central Park’ On Apple TV+, A Musical Animated Comedy From Josh Gad And The Creator Of ‘Bob’s Burgers’

Loren Bouchard is known for bringing the warm and hilarious Bob’s Burgers to our screens, and Josh Gad is known for being Olaf from Frozen (among other things). So what happens when the two of them get together, and Gad brings along some of his funny and very musical friends? The result is a very funny and warm new animated series. Read on for more…

CENTRAL PARK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man starts strumming his violin. He sings: “In the middle of Manhattan, there’s a spot unlike the rest. An actual oasis, just like New York, but undressed.”

The Gist: The man singing is Birdie (Josh Gad) a busker in Central Park and the narrator of the series Central Park. He’s named “Birdie” because he loves birds and he’s bathed in a bird fountain. He sings about how the park is “central to my heart,” about how amazing it is that there’s a wooded oasis in the middle of the big city, where truant kids can smoke weed while their WASPy mothers jog underneath them, among other observations.

Birdie sneaks up to the window of Edendelle “Castle”, the house where the park manager and his family live. The manager, Owen Tillerman (Leslie Odom, Jr.), is excited about the fact that it’s the day when the hot lips turtlehead flowers bloom, and he expects a big crowd (he won’t get it). His wife Paige (Kathryn Hahn) is a journalist who wants to cover hard news at the alt-weekly where she works. Daughter Molly (Kristen Bell) has a crush on a kite-flying boy she’s been drawing comics about for a week. And son Cole (Tituss Burgess) is hiding sausage in his backpack for a very specific reason.

Owen gets word that Champagne, the “shih tzu doodle” owned by one of the richest people in the city, developer Bitsy Brandenham (Stanley Tucci) is lost somewhere in the park. Paige goes to cover the press conference she’s holding to offer a reward. But before the presser, Bitsy’s assistant Helen (Daveed Diggs) cheers her up with a face cream made from whale anus.

Owen shows up at the hot lips turtlehead patch to see that no one is there. He asks Birdie if his job is stupid, and Birdie tells him “own it,” which kicks off another song involving everyone but Birdie, who has to keep chiming in that he’s still there. But once word comes out that Bitsy is offering a $55,000 reward (down from $60,000), all sorts of money-hungry people flood the park, trampling everything, including the hot lips turtleheads.

It turns out that Cole found Champagne and has been keeping him in a landscaping shed. He not only wants a dog, but he also thinks that Bitsy has treated him poorly, not letting him be the dog he’s supposed to be. Owen and Paige convince Cole to give the dog back; instead of being thankful, though, Bitsy plans to buy Central Park and develop it.

Our Take: Gad, Nora Smith and Loren Bouchard are the co-creators of Central Park, and it feels like it’s the big-city musical cousin of Bouchard’s other series, Bob’s Burgers. The main character is an unassuming guy who just wants to do right by his job and his family. And the family that’s around him drives him around the bend, when they’re not being completely disrespectful (mostly the kids). The kids are wise beyond their years and have their own inner lives to live. And the community around him is full of weird characters, some of whom have good motives (Birdie) and others who don’t (Bitsy).

But intermixed in this formula are some really great musical theater compositions, thanks to Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson, the songwriting team that previously worked with Gad on Olaf’s Frozen Adventure. Like with that holiday special, Samsel and Anderson have a knack of making very singable, catchy, rousing tunes that echo musicals of the past, while inserting funny lyrics that move the story along. We loved the lyric in “Central In My Heart,” for instance about “real art” (graffiti) being next to “sorta art” (real art), or the line in “Own It” about Owen being able to dance with his shirt tucked in his shorts.

It helps that Gad was able to bring along his Frozen co-star Bell, as well as sign up Burgess, Hahn and Odom, people who are not only funny as hell but have proven in the past to be at least decent singers (Hahn), if not spectacular ones (Burgess). And then we get the Bouchard tradition of men doing women’s voices, with Tucci doing a perfectly insolent, overprivileged voice for Bitsy and Diggs doing a fine job as the overburdened, but loyal, lackey Helen.

Bouchard and Smith are very adept at not only building a world but making it warm and inviting almost immediately. It’s the reason why Bob’s Burgers is in its tenth season in a Fox animation lineup that was littered with one failed show after another. And it feels like the trio of Bouchard, Smith and Gad are on their way to replicating the formula here.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Birdy sings that the park is “central to my plot!”

Sleeper Star: Hard to call Tituss Burgess a sleeper, but, unless you saw him in Unshakable Kimmy Schmidt, you might now know just how good of a singer he is. We’ll see that here.

Most Pilot-y Line: This is a good place to say that Gad’s fumbling cartoon manner seems to be less irritating here in an adult cartoon where he plays a busker than it is as a snowman in a series of kids’ movies. Just sayin’.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Central Park is funny and warm, and has songs that will stick in your head. It might just be the musical comedy series that will fill the hole in your heart left by the departure of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Central Park On Apple TV+