Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Little Ellen’ On HBO Max, Where A 7 Year-Old Ellen DeGeneres, Her Gramsy And Her Friends Have Funny Adventures

Little Ellen is a kids’ animated series about the adventures of Little Ellen, who lives in New Orleans with her Gramsy (June Squibb) and hangs out with her cousin Becky (Johanna Colon) and buddy Freckle (JeCobi Swain). Since Ellen DeGeneres is one of the show’s executive producers, the likelihood that Little Ellen is modeled after Big Ellen is, well, pretty much a given.

LITTLE ELLEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In the shower, 7 year-old Little Ellen (Laurel Emory) is singing — badly — to her cat Charlie about the Bayou Bestival.

The Gist: In the first 12-minute episode, Little Ellen is so looking forward to going to the Bestival, because it’s the only place she can get the blueberry beignets that she craves. Becky likes to go on the spinny ride, the only one that she’s not too tall to go on and Ellen and Freckle aren’t too short. Freckle wants to dunk his favorite singer in order to get a chance to get backstage passes to the singer’s show. But there’s one problem: Gramsy can’t find her car keys.

They have to take the streetcar to the Bestival, but Gramsy is undeterred. “Sometimes plans change, and that’s OK,” she tells the kids. And they miss the best things about the Bestival. But then other things happen that make it the best Bestival they’ve ever been to. But that’s not before we see the kids singing the blues about missing the stuff they liked best.

In other episodes, Ellen tries to make a rain cloud laugh so Freckle can march in a parade, she tries to cheer up her cat Charlie but learns that sometimes you have to let people be sad, and the kids try use their bag of tricks to get into Gramsy’s adult-only game night, including the “3 kids in a trenchcoat” trick.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Little Ellen has the same knowing vibe as Esme & Roy; both are aimed towards the younger set, giving them tools to be resilient, problem solve and deal with outsized emotions, but they both also have characters and jokes that parents might actually not roll their eyes at.

Our Take: Little Ellen is part of HBO Max’s new Cartoonito umbrella, which will include existing shows like Sesame Street, The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo and a new series of Mo Willems shorts. Created by Kevin A. Leman II, it has the smart sensibility we’ve come to know from recent Warner Bros. Animation series, and it pleasantly doles out its lessons without talking down to its intended preschool-thru-first-grade audience or their parents.

Are there moments where Little Ellen acts like Big Ellen? Absolutely. When she tries to cheer up the rain cloud, she gives a standup routine that we suspect DeGeneres was giving her family at some point in the mid-1960s. It’s strangely observational for someone so young, but still has hacky stuff like “What’s the deal with…” jokes? But even then, there are funny moments, like when she makes the cloud cry and goes, “Ugh, tough cloud.”

Believe us, little jokes that make us laugh are so helpful when we’re watching shows with our kids. And every episode has at least one, like when birds fly out of the trees every time Ellen wails about missing parts of the Bestival. Another funny line was when Ellen said the “3 kids in a trenchcoat” trick “almost never works.” None of these jokes are particularly sophisticated or even designed to go over the heads of the intended audience, but they’re clever enough to tickle our senses of humor, which is all we ask of a kids’ show.

We definitely appreciate the message of resiliency, which is something that kids have a lot of but always need to be reminded that they have that in them. Also, it also helps that characters like Becky are of a different body type than many cartoon characters but it’s just there as a matter of fact and not a subject of jokes.

What Age Group Is This For?: The colorful New Orleans setting will attract toddlers, but the message of the shows are most effective for the 3-to-7 audience. My six-year-old loved all the episodes that were sent out for review.

Parting Shot: As the kids find out when they end up backstage with Freckle’s favorite singer, sometimes plans change. And that’s OK.

Sleeper Star: Gramsy, wonderfully played by June Squibb, has her senior moments, but that’s only played for light laughs. She also is on Ellen’s wavelength, which we see when she catches onto every scheme the kids dream up to get into game night.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Little Ellen is a vibrant, funny show for the PreK set that gives fun lessons in being adaptable and resilient, and viewers should be able to enjoy it, whether they’re fans of DeGeneres or not.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Little Ellen On HBO Max