‘Long Story Short’ is a show that confronts the uncomfortable

Long Story Short

Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Netflix, 2025)

Long Story Short—a newcomer to Netflix’s already-robust catalogue of adult animation—is a story about family and faith and how family and faith can be complicated things. From the creator of the critically acclaimed series BoJack Horseman, Long Story Short will resonate with fans of thoughtful, melancholic animation and tragicomic storytelling. The dialogue is witty, fast-paced, and economical. Plot lines advance with ease, and episodes feel full of good storytelling and pregnant with implied or yet-untold stories.

Long Story Short depicts a Jewish family over time and amidst generational change. Told in nonlinear blocks, it plays with chronological storytelling in a way that furthers plot and enriches backstory. Jumping between childhood, young adulthood, and beyond, the series relies on scene transitions that display the new date to keep viewers from losing the narrative thread. The viewer is often thrust back in time with the knowledge of something that is yet to come.

“If there’s no God, what’s the point of any of this?” one character asks, having a crisis of faith in the middle of his own bar mitzvah. Like BoJack Horseman, Bob-Waksberg’s new show does not shy away from uncomfortable, difficult, or disturbing topics. Instead, Long Story Short centers itself around the messy things that are often most important to us.

Long Story Short’s animation style is pleasant and unique; solid voice-acting breathes life into well-written dialogue; plotting is clever and engaging. The end result is a show that shows more than it tells, a show that respects its viewer and does not patronize with excessive handholding or overly saccharine moralizing.

Long Story Short is available to stream on Netflix.