Good grief, they’re singing!
Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Sally and the rest of the Peanuts characters are returning for the first original musical special in more than 35 years, titled Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical.
Apple TV Plus debuted the 40-minute cartoon on Aug. 15, with the streaming service describing it as: “A musical special about the joy and magic of summer camp and the importance of preserving what you love.” Charlie Brown and his friends find a treasure map that takes them into the wild and of course, there are a lot of songs.
The last time Peanuts did a musical episode was in Snoopy: The Musical, which aired on CBS in 1988.
In taking on the Peanuts franchise, which includes classics such as A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!, Apple has promised to continue developing new Peanuts animated projects. In 2019, one of the first Apple TV Plus shows the service launched was Snoopy in Space.
Know your Peanuts history
Music has long been an integral part of Peanuts, notes CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, author of two pop-culture encyclopedias and a longtime fan hailing from creator Charles M. Schulz’s hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota.
“1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas had a hit Vince Guaraldi jazz soundtrack and also featured the gang memorably singing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” Cooper says. “And thanks to Glee Club in the ’80s, I can still sing every word to Happiness, from the 1967 musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”
Charlie Brown’s love-hate relationship with summer camp is also well established, she notes. The 1983 TV special It’s an Adventure, Charlie Brown is based on a classic series of Peanuts strips where Charlie Brown goes to camp.
“Honestly, that camp story is one of my favorites,” she says. “Charlie Brown gets a rash that makes his head look like a baseball. So he wears a bag over his head at camp and suddenly turns popular, earning the nickname Sack and being elected camp president. The Peanuts kids never really interacted with adults, and summer camp is the perfect place for kid-only adventures to play out.”
Cooper notes that the new special will only be available for Apple TV Plus subscribers, which may disappoint Peanuts fans who don’t pay for that service. While newer Peanuts content like Snoopy in Space have remained Apple TV Plus exclusives, the Christmas and other holiday specials are sometimes also aired on PBS or made available free for non-subscribers for a brief window.
