''The Shivering Truth'' is an American adult stop-motion animated anthology

horror comedy Comedy horror, also known as horror comedy, is a literary, television, and film genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction. Comedy horror has been described as able to be categorized under three types: "black comedy, parody and sp ...

television series created by

Vernon Chatman Vernon Chatman (born October 31, 1972) is an American television producer, writer, voice actor, stand-up comedian, musician and a member of PFFR, an art collective based in Brooklyn, New York City. He created the television series '' Wonder Show ...

and directed by Chatman and Cat Solen. The show is produced by Solen with

PFFR PFFR is a Brooklyn-based production company and art collective consisting of Vernon Chatman, John Lee, Alyson Levy and formerly Jim Tozzi until 2009. The group has been active since 1998. Work The group's portfolio of work includes two albums ...

and

ShadowMachine ShadowMachine is an American animation studio and production company for film, television, commercials and music videos. Since its early days producing the stop-motion animation show ''Robot Chicken'', the company has been producing such shows ...

, and features a wide range of voice talents besides Chatman, including

Janeane Garofalo Janeane Marie Garofalo ( ; born September 28, 1964) is an American comedian, actress, and former co-host on the now-defunct Air America Radio's ''The Majority Report''. Garofalo began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on ...

Jonah Hill Jonah Hill Feldstein (born December 20, 1983) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is known for his comedic roles in films including ''Superbad'' (2007), '' Knocked Up'' (2007), '' 21 Jump Street'' (2012), '' This Is the End'' (201 ...

Trey Parker Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III (born October 19, 1969) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, and composer. He is known for co-creating ''South Park'' (since 1997) and '' The Book of Mormon'' (2011) with his creative partner Matt Stone. ...

David Cross David Cross (born April 4, 1964) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, director, and writer known for his stand-up performances, the HBO sketch comedy series '' Mr. Show'' (1995–1998), and his role as Tobias Fünke in the Fox/Netflix si ...

, Jordan Peele,

Kyle Mooney Kyle James Kozub Mooney (born September 4, 1984) is an American actor, comedian, and writer, who was a cast member of ''Saturday Night Live'' from 2013 until 2022. Mooney co-wrote and starred in the film '' Brigsby Bear'', in addition to co-crea ...

Julia Davis Julia Charlotte L. Davis (born 25 August 1966) is an English actress, comedian, director and writer. She is known for writing and starring in the BBC Three comedy '' Nighty Night'' (2004–2005) and the comedies ''Hunderby'' (2012–2015) and ...

Tierra Whack Tierra Helena Whack (born August 11, 1995) is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. She originally performed as "Dizzle Dizz" as a teenager, but later on reverted to her birth name in 2017. Her debut studio album, ''Whack World'', was releas ...

Will Forte Orville Willis Forte IV ( ; born June 17, 1970) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. Forte is known for being a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' (2002–2010), a recurring character on the show leading to a feature film ada ...

, and

Josh Gad Joshua Ilan Gad (born February 23, 1981) is an American actor. He is known for voicing Olaf in the '' Frozen'' franchise, playing Elder Arnold Cunningham in the Broadway musical '' The Book of Mormon'', and playing Le Fou in the live-action ada ...

, amongst others. ''The Shivering Truth'' premiered on December 10, 2018 on

Adult Swim Adult Swim (AS; stylized as dult swim'' and often abbreviated as s'') is an American adult-oriented night-time cable television channel that shares channel space with the basic cable network Cartoon Network and is programmed by its in-house ...

, with the pilot episode having been released online on May 22, 2018 on the Adult Swim website. In November 2019, Adult Swim renewed the series for a second season, which premiered on May 10, 2020.

Style and content

When announced in a press release by Adult Swim in May 2017, ''The Shivering Truth'' was described as "a delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy, a miniature propulsive omnibus cluster bomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic. A series of loosely-linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your

unconscious mind The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests, and motivations. Even though these processes exi ...

and became lovingly animated in breath-slapping stop motion – in other words, it is the TRUTH". The characters in the show are puppets with wire-based armatures, created with silicone, wool, polystyrene, and

resin In polymer chemistry and materials science, resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds. This article focuses on n ...

. Chatman stated that around six months of physical production, a month of recording, and months of post-production were needed to complete six episodes. Chatman has noted several inspirations for his work on the show, including

Terry Gilliam Terrence Vance Gilliam (; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam has directed 13 feature films, including '' Time Bandits'' (1981), '' ...

's work on '' Monty Python's Flying Circus'', stating that "I saw it when I was very young, so it scared me. I didn't know when the animation was beginning or ending." He also explained that "A lot of my influences are non-animated, primarily in short films, novels, even radio shows. A recent one is

David Eagleman David Eagleman (born April 25, 1971) is an American neuroscientist, author, and science communicator. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO and co-founder of Neosensory, a company that develops devices for sensory substitut ...

's books on the brain. He's a

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, neural circuits, and glial ...

and he gives you 40 different versions of the afterlife, and none of them can co-exist." Solen has spoken on her inspirations as well, saying that "I loved the movie ''

The Wizard of Speed and Time ''The Wizard of Speed and Time'' is a 1988 low-budget feature film written, directed, and starring animator Mike Jittlov, as well as a 1979 16 mm short film, also by Jittlov. 1979 short film In the original short film, a young man in a green wi ...

'', which is a cautionary tale about making movies. Another film that I loved as a kid was

Nicolas Roeg Nicolas Jack Roeg (; 15 August 1928 – 23 November 2018) was an English film director and cinematographer, best known for directing ''Performance'' (1970), '' Walkabout'' (1971), ''Don't Look Now'' (1973), '' The Man Who Fell to Earth'' (1976 ...

's ilmadaptation of Roald Dahl's '' The Witches'', which featured both Anjelica Huston and

Jim Henson James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, cartoonist, actor, inventor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notice as the creator of The Muppets and '' Fraggle Rock'' (1983–1987) and ...

's puppets. It scared me so much!"

Cast

Season 1 Season 2

Music

The song played during the closing credits is usually some version of the old English ballad Long Lankin. The music is often distorted in some way and usually begins near the end of the ballad, at the lines "There's blood in the kitchen, there's blood in the hall / There's blood in the parlour where my lady did fall." The original score is by Heather Christian.

Episodes

Series overview

Pilot (2018)

Season 1 (2018)

Season 2 (2020)

Release

The pilot episode premiered on the Adult Swim website on May 22, 2018. Before the television premiere on December 10, 2018, Adult Swim created an "online scavenger hunt" by releasing all six episodes on multiple websites and platforms. In June 2020, the series was uploaded to

subscription video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

streaming service

HBO Max HBO Max is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in the United States on May 27, 2020, the service is built around the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros., Cartoon Netw ...

, with the exception of the episode "Ogled Inklings", which was intentionally excluded due to a scene where a woman gives birth to a child wearing a peaked policeman's cap, whom the doctor refers to as "a dirty pig". This ban took place due to the then-ongoing

George Floyd protests The George Floyd protests were a series of protests and civil unrest against police brutality and racism that began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, and largely took place during 2020. The civil unrest and protests began as part of internat ...

and rising prominence of the

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police br ...

movement, with an Adult Swim representative stating that "When Adult Swim transitions series to a new platform we determine what episodes are selected through creative and cultural filters and our standards and practices policies. Oftentimes these decisions are made in collaboration with the show’s creator”. Similar action was also taken against episodes of ''

The Boondocks Boondocks are remote, usually brushy areas. Boondocks may also refer to: * The Boondocks (band), an Estonian rock band * ''The Boondocks'' (comic strip), a comic strip by Aaron McGruder ** ''The Boondocks'' (2005 TV series), the television ser ...

'' and an episode of ''

Aqua Teen Hunger Force ''Aqua Teen Hunger Force'' (also known by various alternative titles), sometimes abbreviated as ''ATHF'' or ''Aqua Teen'', is an American adult animated television series created by Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro for Cartoon Network's late ni ...

''.

Reception

Daniel Kurland of ''

Den of Geek ''Den of Geek'' is a US and UK-based website covering entertainment with a focus on pop culture. The website also issues a bi-annual magazine. History ''Den of Geek'' was founded in 2007 by Simon Brew in London. In 2012, DoG Tech LLC licensed ...

'' praised the pilot along with the subsequent first episodes to premiere, giving the show a score of 5/5 and calling it "straight up one of the best things that I’ve ever seen in my life". Jonathan Barkan of Dread Central called the show "pure nightmare fuel genius", writing that it "looks like the cast aside baby of

Charlie Kaufman Charles Stuart Kaufman (; born November 19, 1958) is an American filmmaker and novelist. He wrote the films '' Being John Malkovich'' (1999), '' Adaptation'' (2002), and '' Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004). He made his directorial ...

and

Wes Anderson Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American filmmaker. His films are known for their eccentricity and unique visual and narrative styles. They often contain themes of grief, loss of innocence, and dysfunctional families. Cited by ...

... it's packed full of

absurdist humor Surreal humour (also called surreal comedy, absurdist humour, or absurdist comedy) is a form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning, thus producing events and behaviours that are obviously illogical. Portrayals of surrea ...

, the kind of stuff that you will watch and not be sure if you should laugh, wince, or look at your friends and ask, 'What the fuck?'" Dave Trumbore of

Collider A collider is a type of particle accelerator which brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Colliders may either be ring accelerators or linear accelerators. Colliders are used as a research tool in particl ...

wrote that "It’s not often you get to put this level of artistry and insanity on display on an international television network", and that "You’ll definitely laugh while watching ''The Shivering Truth'', but there’s just as good a chance that you’ll throw up a bit, too".

References

Notes

External links