Move Over, ‘Adolescence’; This 100% RT Sitcom Is the Best Netflix Original Series of 2025

Netflix dwarfs all of its competition when it comes to hours watched yearly, but 2025 saw the streaming service releasing an abundance of exciting new shows. While there was certainly a lot of discussion surrounding returning shows like Stranger Things, Wednesday, and Nobody Wants This, Netflix earned most of its critical acclaim for Adolescence, The Beast in Me, Death by Lightning, and Dept. Q. Although the streamer has succeeded because it provides different types of programming aimed at niche audiences, Long Story Short is the type of ambitious, deeply thoughtful TV show that could only have existed on Netflix. There was plenty of anticipation of what showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg would do next after the tremendous praise that he received for BoJack Horseman, and Long Story Short is completely satisfying, if not exactly what fans may have expected.

Long Story Short was a deeply personal project for Bob-Waksberg, who revealed he was heavily inspired by his own childhood and relationship with his family. The series centers on the relationship between three adult siblings over the course of various points in their adolescence and adulthood; Avi (Ben Feldman), Shira (Abbi Jacobson), and Yoshi (Max Greenfield) find themselves caught within the unwavering affection of their father, Elliot (Paul Reiser), and the critical, high expectations of their mother, Naomi (Lisa Edelstein). As was the case with BoJack Horseman, Long Story Short is the type of series that revels in its creative visual language and humorous observations about human nature before unveiling a string of devastating moments that hit like an emotional freight train for anyone who would describe their own family dynamic as complicated.

‘Long Story Short’ Embraces the Power of Animation

Adult animation is in no short supply on streaming, but Long Story Short is able to tell a mature, thought-provoking story about memory and regret that doesn’t resort to lewd or graphic humor. While even BoJack Horseman had its occasional moments of blue humor, Long Story Short is at its funniest when it reveals a moment or pattern that is relatable. It’s the perfect case for why animation is a medium that offers opportunities that couldn’t be told any other way, as the show is set across multiple years and fluctuates between them without being convoluted. While it would be challenging for a live-action show to do multiple set-ups and alter the appearance of its characters in the span of a half-hour episode, Long Story Short feels like a collage that reflects how its characters perceive the world; it’s a show that’s impressionistic, not realistic, and some moments are depicted in a way that indicate that different characters hold contradictory beliefs on what happened.

Image by Jefferson Chacon

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Long Story Short is incredibly powerful in how it examines the totality of one’s familial bonds, but the show is an incredible feat of animation that clearly took a tremendous amount of effort from a talented team of artists. The look of the show often resembles that of a scrapbook, and often congeals to look like the ways in which a child might draw a picture of their own family. Animation isn’t just the chosen method to tell the story, but a way of justifying the show’s narrative incongruities; in many ways, it feels like an argument in favor of telling stories in a way in which everything does not have to be taken literally.

‘Long Story Short’ Isn’t a Copy of ‘BoJack Horseman’

While being marketed as the new show from Bob-Waksberg certainly helped draw in new viewers, Long Story Short isn’t all that similar to BoJack Horseman, which had a more rapid-fire sense of humor and relied heavily on popular culture references. Although BoJack Horseman was set within a unique world in which anthropomorphic animals existed within a fairly recognizable version of reality, Long Story Short is ostensibly a more realistic choice that is simply told in a creative way. BoJack Horseman, for all the acclaim that it received, began to grate on some viewers over time because it became too devastating to watch. Long Story Short certainly has some tearjerking moments (that will hit close to home for anyone who has lost a parent), but it doesn’t reach the disturbing levels that BoJack Horseman did in analyzing its toxic characters. There’s also a cultural distinction between the two shows that reflects different aspects of Bob-Waksberg’s identity; while BoJack Horseman explores the allure of celebrity and the abuses within the entertainment industry, Long Story Short profoundly addresses Jewish identity and has insights about what it’s like to live in a religious household.

What’s most exciting about Long Story Short is that it’s a series that has room to grow unburdened by specific expectations. Other Netflix shows like Untamed and The Diplomat may be continuing, but there’s a clear path that those stories will take based on how their recent seasons ended. Long Story Short has been renewed for another season, but it seems like Bob-Waksberg has freedom in how to interpret the show’s next chapter, which could go in any multitude of directions. It’s a show that has profound observations that may speak to audiences from all walks of life, but unlike Adolescence, it is not advocating for a specific agenda or trying to raise awareness for a real-world issue. Netflix may be trying to be a service that offers a little bit of something for everyone, but, despite being defined by its creator’s worldview, Long Story Short somehow connects through its universally relatable musings about this crazy thing called life.