Charlie Brooker’s Cat Burglar has just landed on Netflix and this is what happened when three generations watched the new interactive cartoon together.
Charlie Brooker is perhaps best known for his work on Black Mirror. The dark, satirical commentary on modern society firmly sits at the top of my list as one of my all-time favourite shows, and while fans of his wait patiently to know whether the series will ever make a return, the British filmmaker has treated us to a new show – of interesting (and somewhat perplexing) proportions.
Cat Burglar is new to Netflix and, on first inspection, looks like any regular cartoon. It immediately reminded me of Tom & Jerry, and while I love animation as much as the next person brought up on Pixar, it’s not a show I thought I’d be whiling away my time with on a weekday evening.
The innovative show takes its guise from Brooker’s 2018 Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror and also, more recently, the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt movie which both allowed viewers to control what would happen next. It’s a way of immersing us deeper into the content and while I thought Cat Burglar would take a dark Brooker-esque turn, it was actually just a delightful, fun experience.
Of course, with anything game-related, it’s always best to do it with a small team in tow so dragging my mother and sister to the Netflix screen, we embarked on the weird and wonderful journey of being the aforementioned cat burglar.
The premise is simple – Rowdy Cat needs to outsmart Peanut the guard dog in order to steal a piece of art in a museum. In among the funny, light-hearted snippets of the cartoon, the viewer has to answer quickfire questions in order to progress.
You get three lives – not nine like most cats, may I add – and when summarising the show, my sister said that while it was “highly interactive”, it was also “delightfully frustrating”.
You see, there’s no timer or even an introduction before the question appears on your screen. “It’s edge-of-your-seat,” my sister added once we’d finally made it to the end after multiple rounds of trying.
Because it’s so quick, the time pressure makes it more interactive as you can’t just stop and enjoy – you’ve got to think and be poised to answer the (totally random) questions at the drop of a hat.
The questions themselves are a bit of a riddle and took a while for us to get our heads round. For example, “What’s most fragile?” popped up. While we all know the correct answer would be “turtle egg” over “turtle”, the random satirical inclusion of “foundation or relationships” almost threw us.
Just when you think you’ve got a handle on the sheer randomness of the questions and statements thrown at you, Cat Burglar almost outwits you.
Watching it as three different generations – my sister being the plucky Gen Z, me being the fretting millennial and my mother being the calmer Gen X – was certainly the experience. But playing it together just demonstrated how fun it is for everyone.
While my sister remained the trusty and optimistic cheerleader, I tried to stop my hands sweating and tried my best to move the mouse frantically to answer the questions. My mum, however, was a little confused by the format at the beginning: “It takes a few rounds to get used to it,” she admitted – but then evolved into a cool, calm and collected quizmaster later on.
“It’s a cartoon that’s done in the style of the era that I grew up in,” my mother was quick to point out. “The classic cartoon was big when I was a kid – we had The Road Runner Show, Wacky Races, Bugs Bunny and so this new show was quick and funny but also incredibly nostalgic.”
You can also re-do the show time and time again as certain scenes and details are changed – always keeping you on your toes. In fact, when you end up losing all your lives, the show makes a point of telling you to try again because it’ll all be different.
The questions really can be head-scratchers, though, but it does force you to work as a team cohesively and very quickly.
In the age of hard-hitting television and gritty series – which we love – sometimes it is nice to sit down and allow your inner child to be released. If, like me, you’re expecting the new Brooker cartoon to be a sinister look at society, allow me to underline that it’s really not, but also doesn’t need to be.
Cat Burglar was intense, certainly not for children and was funny, clever and witty all at the same time. And if you ask me, sometimes that’s all the lightheartedness you want from a TV show.
Cat Burglar is now available to stream on Netflix and the interactive feature is only compatible on certain devices.
Images: Netflix
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