Each week, Netflix drops a list of the top 10 films and TV shows dominating the platform, and for the week ending Sept. 21, the animated series Haunted Hotel crept onto the list of most-watched shows. Haunted Hotel isn’t necessarily an “adult animation” series the way that something like Big Mouth or BoJack Horseman is, and it doesn’t deal with especially adult or raunchy themes, but it’s also not targeted at young kids.
The comedy series was created by Rick & Morty writer Matt Roller and it centers on a single mother of two, Katherine (voiced by Eliza Coupe), who inherits a haunted hotel called the Undervale. Along with her two kids, Ben and Esther, the hotel is inhabited by Katherine’s brother Nathan (Will Forte), now a ghost himself, who used to run the place. The hotel is also home to a demon named Abbadon, who’s trapped in the body of an 18th-century boy, and dozens of ghosts who reside in each of the hotel’s rooms.
Coupe’s Katherine is the one person in the show who finds it off-putting to be surrounded by so many ghosts. She seems to be the only person grounded in reality. In the first episode, she submits to them after an exorcism gone wrong and makes peace with their presence under her roof. While Katherine generally exists to play the straight man in a comedic pairing, it means Will Forte gets to do his offbeat thing as the recently deceased Nathan, who’s just trying to help Katherine get her bearings as the new hotel owner. In addition to Forte, who delivers the most ominous of lines with the perpetual jolliness of Ned Flanders, the cast is rounded out by loads of comedians like Maria Bamford, Paul F. Tompkins, Riki Lindhome, Kumail Nanjiani and more who help make the hotel’s bleeding mirrors and monsters in the walls seem more fun, less creepy. (Look no further than this KPop Demon Hunters parody of Your Idol performed by Abbadon the demon to get a sense of the show’s twisted sense of humor.)
Several years back, when my kids were little, one of the only shows we could all agree on (before Bluey came along, obviously) was the Disney Channel’s Gravity Falls (now available on Disney Plus). The kid-friendly animated mystery series was about a kid named Dipper and his twin sister Mabel (Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal), who live with their uncle and investigate all the creepy, supernatural goings-on in the town of Gravity Falls. While the show ran for only two seasons, it’s become a cult favorite that has gained in popularity over the last decade because of its irreverent humor and impressive list of guest stars like Jennifer Coolidge, Jon Stewart and even Will Forte.
While Gravity Falls is rated TV-Y7, Haunted Hotel is TV-14, so I do want to make it clear that they’re not for the same audience. If you have a grade-school-aged child, Haunted Hotel’s cartoon violence and discussions of murder and suicide may be too dark for them. But the similar supernatural vibes, sense of humor and great comedic voice casts seem like the perfect way for older fans of Gravity Falls to graduate to a slightly more mature show that tackles similar themes. And if you’ve watched Haunted Hotel but you’ve never seen Gravity Falls, well then, I can only ask, what are you waiting for?
