Sh!t to drink coffee to: #1 - "Long Head"
Drink good coffee - do cool things
Welcome to the new series Sh!t To Drink Coffee to, where I sit down and write about things I sat down to consume while I sat down to consume coffee.
It’s content and coffee - all in one.
In this episode I check out “Long Head” - the new animated series from Australian comedian, Millie Holten.
Long Head - by Millie Holten
When I was growing up, I loved the old cartoons. I’d run home every day after school to get in front of the old idiot box and spend a few hours melting away the day with some mindless drivel. They were simpler times.
But long gone are the days where people sit down to watch anything for longer than 30 seconds. Attention spans of gnats. Our brains are melting and leaking out our ears.
It takes something truly captivating to get one to pause for more than a blink of an eye, and that is exactly what Millie Holten has created in Long Head.
Long Head is a series on TikTok that follows the happy-go-lucky, self-confessed “war criminal”, Long Head, who has a, well, has a long head, and “wants to go to heaven to met PharLap.”
Across six 60ish second episodes, we follow Long Head has he attempts to make sense of his strange world, navigate the same insecurities that we all have, and tries to become king with a sword in his butt.
It all sounds a bit absurdist, far-fetched and cooked. And it is. But it’s also a perfectly executed comedy that manages to cram a whole bunch of soul, emotion, and laughs in a short period of time.
While Long Head the series is new, Long Head himself isn’t, having featured in over 40 comics, written by Millie and featured on her Instagram.
Translating a niche comic strip into an animated series could have seen the essence of Long Head buried under the distraction of moving pictures, but he works so well in this format.
Everything I had imagined Long Head to be as a real boy, is there. He’s alive!
Australian comic Sam Campbell lends his voice to Long Head so effortlessly, that if you didn’t know better you’d think they were always one-in-the-same. There is no Long Head, there is no Sam Campbell - there is just this. There couldn’t have been a better choice to voice Mr Head.
With only 60 seconds to play with, there’s no room any filler. The writing is brilliant, with smart, witty, and sarcastic dialogue, that gives each episode a sense of going somewhere. While it follows the classic ‘set-up/punchline/laugh’ sort of joke format, it feels fresh and new.
Long Head has struck a chord with the TikTok generation, generating over 4 millions views in the few weeks it’s been out. That’s quite the achievement when most people just want to sit and doom scroll all day.
It’s a brilliant series, which you can enjoy in its entirety during one cup of coffee.
Check it out over on TikTok - you don’t need to be signed up to the Tok to watch it - you can watch it through your phone’s web browser. Don’t be afraid of your new king.
