Parents' Guide to Disenchantment

It's beautifully animated, made by experienced craftspeople, and voiced by well-loved actors -- but Matt Groening's high-profile series seems to have forgotten to bring the funny. Viewers taking a gander hoping for Futurama's brilliantly subversive thigh-slappers or even wan latter-day Simpsons chuckles will have to content themselves with gags like one in which Bean cracks her head against medieval-era signs for Dreamland businesses ("Onion Julius," "One-Hour Tooth Removal") or a dungeon's torture chamber that brings the pain with a rack, a row of whips, and a book of golf jokes. Considering that Groening and company could have used Netflix's network standards-free format to really let loose and brew up some more adult humor, these cute yet predictable visual jokes are a tad disappointing.

The setups of each episode, too, run along classic sitcom lines: Bean gets a job! Bean throws a bachelor party! Bean throws a big party while her dad's out of town! It's not bad, per se -- there are talented writers and actors at work here. It's just a little disappointing, because the concept of the show -- a young woman born in a restrictive time finds ways to subvert society's expectations -- is fairly fresh. As it is, Disenchantment passes in a pleasant, but not really memorable, way, reading most of all as a valiant swing and a miss.