“Mating Season,” Netflix’s newest animated comedy, opens with titles showing real-life footage of woodland animals in various states of copulation to the smooth tone of “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” by Elvin Bishop. It’s not a surprising introduction to a series from the same creative team as “Big Mouth,” one of the streamer’s longest-running animated series, which for eight seasons told the profane but heartfelt tales of middle schoolers navigating their burgeoning puberty.
But although “Mating Season” shares a lot of DNA with its predecessor, series creator Nick Kroll emphasizes that the show, which dropped all 10 episodes earlier this week, is decidedly not “‘Big Mouth’ in the woods.’” The series — which he co-created with his writing partners Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett — is set in a community of talking forest animals that largely behave like humans, albeit humans who sleep in caves and hibernate in the winter, as they navigate dating and romance. For the creative team, the appeal was partly about building their animal world, but mostly about being able to evolve their signature brand of sex comedy for a new demographic.
“We were finishing ‘Big Mouth,’ and just sort of batting around ideas of what might be a new project for us to work on together, because we’ve loved working together so much, and I think it was Mark who came in and said the title ‘Mating Season,’ and it was an immediately clear, ‘Oh yeah, sure, like, let’s!’” Kroll said during a recent interview with IndieWire. “That format allows us to do an extension of the stories that we were telling on ‘Big Mouth,’ but those were middle schoolers and high schoolers. To be able to make those a continuation of that kind of storytelling, but with, adults in the dating world, it felt like a great opportunity.”
The resulting show plays a bit more like a hangout sitcom in the classical vein than “Big Mouth” ever did, focusing on four friends — overemotional and recently single bear Josh (Zach Woods), party animal raccoon Ray (Kroll), sensible deer Fawn (June Diane Raphael), and shy lesbian fox Penelope (Sabrina Jalees) — as they spend their days getting drunk at the forest trading post and embark on wild adventures. Their problems prove typical of the experiences of someone in their late 20s or 30s: the pilot sees Josh attempting to pick himself up from a brutal and unexpected breakup with his girlfriend, while the finale focuses on Fawn as she struggles with attending the wedding of her ex.
“Big Mouth” began as a show inspired by Kroll and Goldberg’s childhoods, but right from the first season quickly grew into a much broader show that tackled many different adolescent perspectives. “Mating Season” is much more contained in its approach, focusing on the four main characters exclusively across the season, with some guest stars
“There’s something about ‘Big Mouth,’ I think, specifically about kids and understanding their identities that felt like it would be amazing to be able to dig in with all the different kinds of characters,” Kroll said. “At least right now with ‘Mating Season,’ this is an ensemble show about these four characters, and we’ll really be with them as our way in, and we’ll have a bunch of fun guest stars and start to build our world out. But you really want to focus, especially at the top of a show, on the core group, and the audience really knows who to lock into. If you go too wide too early, it’s just a little confusing and disjointed for an audience to absorb it all.”
To better situate the audience into the world of the show and the characters’ stories, Kroll said he and the creative team, especially Goldberg, came up with some ground ideas for the world — how often the characters are on two or four feet, if they wear clothing, what technology they have access to — while also coming up ideas, like other animated animals like Bambi or Garfield being celebrities in this world, as they went along. In general, Kroll said they allowed for a lot of on the fly work during production: his favorite moments voicing Ray where when he was recording with the cast or guest stars in person, because they would frequently improvise jokes and scenes together.
“Oftentimes in animation, especially after Covid, people are one at a time in the booth, and the more that you can get people together, the sharper everything is,” Kroll said. “Everyone’s performance comes up, and we had June, Zach, and Sabrina, as well as incredible guest stars. Many of them are incredible improvisers, and we’re able to add moments and jokes throughout, and it comes through in the final performance. So, anytime I got to be in the booth with another actor was was a highlight.”
Playing Ray also allowed Kroll to come full circle on a fixation he’s had for his entire career by playing a raccoon. As the actor describes it, he’s had a lifelong “fascination” with the animals and their “funny little hands.” The animals crop up in many of the works he’s written, from “Big Mouth” to “Oh, Hello” on Broadway. So, when they came up with the idea for a show about forest animals
“Wherever I get a chance, I’ve mentioned or think about raccoons, and so when we started to work on the show, I felt like, ‘Well, for sure, I will be a raccoon,’” Kroll said.
All episodes of “Mating Season” Season 1 are now streaming on Netflix.
