Northern Tails

Yes Tails not Tales I checked

This post is part of the regular feature ‘Let Me Talk To You About,’ where I ramble about creative works of any medium. You can adjust which segments you receive here. Today’s installment comes to you from underground, above ground, and maybe even a tree.

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I have a problem of browsing youtube too much, but sometimes it leads me to good things, like when I saw the trailer for a puppet show and subscribed so I could watch it as it uploaded. That puppet show is Northern Tails, a mockumentary where a crew of arctic ground squirrels work to make an educational show about the Canadian Boreal Forest and the animals that live in it, as well as the challenges they are facing due to climate change.

Each episode opens with the host Scout Perry talking to her crew about the featured character for the day’s episode, then follows a day in the life of said subject, with Scout narrating a short animated educational segment and another segment where a fox interviews humans to see what they know about the animal of the episode.

While the characters are shown using technology like social media, it does not shy away from the matter of some of them being prey and others being predators. Instead it mines that as a source of dark humor, like the running gag of a squirrel in Scout’s crew getting snatched up by an eagle.

Its hard to think of any recent media using actual puppets that have no connection to Jim Henson, so that was part of what drew my interest to Northern Tails. While you can’t see the pupeeters, you can see the connecting lines used to move the puppets, espeically on the arms. I didn’t find that jarring however, I accepted it as part of the show’s visual style.

All of the major characters have somewhat anthropomorphic designs, they all stand on two legs and walk like humans, but are clearly animals. Other minor characters are less anthropomorphized and simply the animal without any extra touches. My favorite of the puppets in the show is definitely Michael Jay (a fox), he’s cute.

The episodes are all short, watching the entire first season only takes a little over an hour. Which makes sense for a show being broadcast on youtube. The episode titles and thumbnails also play into the mockumentary format, coming off as though they were created by Scout’s film crew.

My biggest complaint is that we don’t get to see the main characters interact with each other much, but part of that is owed to the faithfulness towards animal behavior. I can think of a very good reason why Isabelle (a caribou influencer) doesn’t share any scenes with the wolf family.

Still, with the animals that don’t actively try to eat each other I wish they had more time to interact. But the approach the show takes is more dedicating an episode to one character with their own small supporting cast. So this is more a matter of inaccurate expectations compared to what the show was actually doing.

With how short and sweet the whole thing is I definitely suggest at least watching the first episode. It’s fun, and educational, but not in the way where it is talking down to you. I’m thankful I came upon it.