Monsters at Work: why on earth have Disney made a workplace comedy aimed at children?

Let me tell you how we got through a year of lockdown with young children. Yes, we coaxed them through their schoolwork and took them for bike rides and built dens out of sofa cushions and read the complete works of Julia Donaldson. But we also let them watch a lot of television because, boy, were those days long, and we parents had full-time jobs to manage at the same time.

And, finally, the terrible truth hit: they had watched everything. Truly, everything. There was no classic Disney film or episode of Spongebob Squarepants they had not seen, no Operation Ouch experiment left untried. They had completed Netflix.

They’ve returned to school now and their brains appear still to be functioning, so I don’t think any permanent harm was done. I spent my formative years glued to Rainbow, Mr Ben, Bod and Hong Kong Phooey, and it didn’t do me any harm (unless you count the fact that I now watch television for a living). Anyway, I tell you this because I enlisted their help when reviewing Monsters at Work (Disney+). It is a spin-off from the Pixar films Monsters, Inc and Monsters University which, obviously, my children have seen.

Monsters at Work is an animated series - or, as they used to be known, a cartoon - of 25-minute episodes. It begins with a big-horned monster called Tylor Tuskmon turning up for his first day as a “scarer” at Monsters, Inc, only to learn that the company is rebranding and the monsters are required to make children laugh rather than scream.

It looks pretty good - the furry monsters are well-rendered - and it’s warm-hearted (one of the characters is voiced by a twinkly Henry Winkler). But it is lacklustre. Bafflingly, it’s a workplace comedy. Note to Disney: children don’t go to work. They don’t care about office politics, or know what a facilities team is, and they’re not going to relate to lines such as “the metrics of your performance will be monitored by our humour gauge”.

My eight-year-old said she didn’t understand half of the dialogue. The five-year-old said, more than once: “Is it nearly finished?” So there you have it. Trust me, they’re the experts.