The Shivering Truth

Definitely not for everyone. It's twisted, depressing, deep, stupid, occasionally hilarious, sometimes unsettling, and undeniably creative. If you like shows made by the PFFR team and/or things that are very unconventional and are difficult to categorise you'll like this. Otherwise you're probably best skipping this one.

This show makes me incredibly uncomfortable. It's like how you would see a fever dream if you could remember it when you wake up in the morning. I don't know wtf is up with this show, but I cannot take my eyes away from it.

Nothing can quite prepare you for this show when you watch it for the first time. I sat in my armchair, grinning like an idiot, thinking "What the hell was that?" I needed more. It was as if I'd just watched someone's nightmares.

Profoundly disturbing and disturbingly profound, the show looks at the human condition through the skewed lens of surreal dream logic, it is often disturbing, usually gory but always funny. Why do butterflies hate Bali? What happens when you have too much self esteem? And what happens when you manage to get that 'little bit of God' that everyone is supposed to have inside them to leave your body at gunpoint? All these questions are answered, even though you never realised you actually wanted to know these answers in the first place.

I saw the pilot at Sundance without any context or knowledge of the upcoming show and this is by far the funniest thing that I have seen in the whole festival and possibly in my life. I thought it was a self contained short and was elated to find out afterward that this is a pilot episode for a show. I don't know how much I can talk about, but dreamlike is an apt description. It is like if Robot Chicken had a fever dream and it is beautiful.

I absolutely love everything the PFFR crowd do (some of their crew even co-write South Park.) These episodes, only 11 minutes each, pack more madness and laughter in than entire seasons of other shows. Not for the faint-hearted. If you liked Wonder Showzen, Xavier Renegade Angel or similar, this is for you.

And if you can't stand the dull fare of most output and wished to just try something unhinged and completely different, give it a go.