LONG STORY SHORT : NETFLIX SERIES

LONG Story Short is the latest animated series from Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the talented showrunner who is best known for his early Netflix hit BoJack Horseman.

As fans of his previous work will know, Bob-Waksberg's sensibility seems to come through an eclectic mix of absurdist humour and raw, emotional realism.

In contrast to BoJack's evolutionary quality, Long Story Short starts exactly where it means to start.  This is ironic, perhaps, given that the show's central conceit is that it tells the story of a multi-generation family in a non-chronological manner.

In episode one, we are introduced to the Schwoopers, a dysfunctional middle-class Jewish family consisting of matriarch Naomi [ Lisa Edelstein ], patriarch Elliot [ Paul Reiser ], eldest son Avi [ Ben Faldman ], middle child Shira [ Abbi Jacobson ] and youngest Yoshi [ Max Greenfield ].

Darting across decades of time and generations of tension, we witness couples meet, marry, divorce and die - sometimes all in the same episode and always not in that order.

The show possesses a primarily emotional rather rational logic to it that fits nicely with it being an animation.

It's often said that animation possesses a quality that makes it particularly good for processing emotional trauma.

The essence of the medium involves purposely selecting emotions in the world to bring to life, while leaving others behind.

This process of self-conscious selection provides a space to order and sort the world in a manner comparable to something like therapy, processing the information differently through the act of bringing it to life on screen.

The World Students Society thanks Alexander Sergeant, a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster in the UK.