From the creator of Bob’s Burgers comes a new series about an interracial family living in Manhattan, New York. Father & husband Owen Tillerman works at the titular Central Park that is often at risk of being shutdown and turned into a patch of corporate land by the elderly money grubbing Bitsy Brandenham. 

Central Park is a 2020 animated musical sitcom, it is produced by 20th Century Television and will stream exclusively on Apple TV+ on May 29, 2020. 

Editor’s Note: Screener access to the first four episodes of Central Park was provided by Apple in support of this review. Spoilers for the aforementioned episodes may be present ahead of their May 29th premieres. 

One of the greatest elements of Bob’s Burgers is its every so often musical numbers that help broaden the plot of the episode said song features in. Series creator Loren Bouchard has decided to stretch this into a staple theme for his new series Central Park. It’s clear that the show takes a number of beats from its predecessor but that doesn’t mean it’s lost from a sense of original identity. 

THE GOOD: Central Park is a series that unlike Bouchard’s previous animated venture Bob’s Burgers opts to focus on a single linear storyline while surrounding it with stories central to its characters. These stories often carry over to further episodes or tie into the central arc of the park being endanger of being destroyed by the antagonist Bitsy Brandenham. Each character has their own central arc: Owen wants to save the park, Paige wants to do hard hitting “real” journalism, Cole wants to own Brandenham’s mistreated pet dog after the two bonded, and Molly wants to date the resident kite flyer of the park. In addition to the family the other characters have their own stories too such as Brandenham wanting respect despite being the wealthiest person in Central Park and her assistant Helen wanting to usurp her. Narrator Birdie wants to see Owen (who he describes as his best friend) and his family thrive with everything they do.

Previous series Bob’s Burgers which has between 3-5 or so musical numbers per season, Central Park has about 3-5 musical numbers per episode. While not every song will be something that will be placed onto viewers iPod playlists for years to come like with the former, there are some standouts here and there that continue to show Bouchard’s musical gift. Such as the opening number explaining the series premise and the song “own it” which were both featured in the pilot. The animation is more or less the same as that of Bob’s Burgers current animated form. So much so that if you had told me this was a spinoff or sequel series I would have believed you not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Bouchard has an art style he’s been doing for several years and it works for the material he develops and uses it for.

THE BAD: One of the major problems I think people will have with Central Park is the fact that everybody wants to be Gene Belcher there’s singing and dancing in every episode which is to be expected in a musical. However the long form nature of it in Central Park may be a turn off especially for those who enjoy the storytelling elements of Bob’s Burgers and Central Park is of course of a similar style. I also worry that the show may leave itself open to quality fatigue with the singing. I know we can’t expect every song to be a hit, so far the songs have been very catchy but there’s always the thought of “how long before this starts to wear thin?”. The music in Bob’s Burgers is a fan-favorite partly because the recent song has a better chance of standing out from the previous due to the rarity of the singing in that show. Central Park unfortunately doesn’t have that luxury, at least not from what I’ve seen thus far. There’s no reason why episodes of the show can’t have only so many songs to keep things fresh, but it’s clear they’ve set a maximum number on them per episode that they need or want to reach.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: I’m honestly not too sure about how many viewers who didn’t come from the Bob’s Burgers crowd will be willing to give it a try, but Central Park is a fun adultish animated series with some charming characters and good singing. Because this is a musical every episode will have a handful of songs, so if you can’t get past the heavy emphasis on singing and animated dance routines then this show probably won’t be for you. But the storytelling & character and world building here is just as strong as it is in Bob’s Burgers so it’s worth the ride to see where the story goes. Otaku Dome gives Central Park an 80 out of 100.