Gus Plus Us

(S1: E1-3)

Competing against their own original program, A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay, The Daily Wire has introduced the Texas-born children's program Gus Plus Us to its children's streaming platform, Bentkey. Humans have been mixing it up with puppets in children's broadcast television since 1947, when the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie first went over the airwaves. However, as you can see from the clip below, as spectacles, they've come a long way.

Visuals and music are what truly set Gus Plus Us apart from other small, single-location preschool programs. While not extravagant, the sets and design elements are crafted with exceptional taste, and the overall composition is remarkably pleasant, giving the impression of a scope and depth that far exceed what is surely a very small soundstage. Those responsible for the visuals are masters of their craft.

The third episode takes the core cast "outside" of the home main set for the first time. With only simple camera tricks, green screen, and shockingly good Foley/sound design, the showrunners add a kinetic energy to the program that was noticeably missing in the previous two entries. This promises that, as the show continues to evolve, viewers can expect the same clever sense of play and invention to keep pushing its little world wider.

Likewise, the music, though limited, vastly outclasses virtually any other children's program today. Clearly, the husband-and-wife duo responsible for Gus Plus Us are talented musicians, but rarely has a program outside of Sesame Street produced musical numbers with such skill and professionalism. That the production is minuscule by comparison only makes it that much more impressive.

However, when shopping for programs for your very young children, if you're anything like my wife, you're almost certainly more concerned with the content than anything else, especially of the educational variety. Unfortunately, this is where Gus Plus Us falls short. Of the three episodes that we were given to screen, the lessons were thin. That's not to suggest that a program aimed at preschoolers should be teaching existentialism, or anything. Yet, something more substantial than it is nice to be nice would elevate the program from a twelve-minute opportunity for stay-at-home moms to grab a glass of rosé to must-watch TV for the little ones.

That said, the last of the three episodes we watched had a lesson of questionable value and perspective, so much so that it would give me pause enough to feel obliged to monitor the next few episodes alongside my children (see Woke Report below).