Ten Year Old Tom

It’s hard not to get swept off your feet by the very first moments of the animated “Ten Year Old Tom,” as the Shady Oaks Elementary School concert band kicks off “Amazing Grace,” honking, bleating and groaning. “Oh my god,” says a parent, very out loud, “This is just painful.” Many of us have been there, as perpetrator or victim.“Ten Year Old Tom” is something of a comedic triumph, however.Ten Year Old Tom Season 1 Download

Tom is a mix of the biblical Job and a bemused character out of a Beckett play, and the show is original enough that one goes looking for comparisons. Similar to the randy, first-rate “Sex Education,” which just released its third season on Netflix, much of the humor here comes from the blunt honesty of the dialogue (though the situations in that show aren’t actually absurd). “South Park” continues to shock and amuse with the precocious vulgarity of its central quartet, but Tom is really the antithesis of Eric Cartman : In “South Park,” the outrageousness is about what comes out of the mouths of 9-year-olds. In Mr. Dildarian’s show, the alarm and laughs are about what adults are willing to tell a 10-year-old.“I need to know if you’re familiar with the term ‘philandering rat,’” says Tom’s mother ( Edi Patterson ) regarding her son’s missing father, who is not, as she had told him, on a business trip to London. “He’s going to dance clubs with someone named Tina in Myrtle Beach,” she says. “I was highly adrenalized when I made up that lie.” Well, that actually makes more sense, Tom says. “I never knew why they’d fly a plumber to London for a month.” Tom rolls with everything, yet everything surprises him.The guest voices in this cartoon for grown-ups include John Malkovich, Natasha Lyonne, Todd Glass, Jennifer Coolidge (who plays the Tom-and-bassoon-hating parent in episode 1) and a raft of established and up-and-coming comedians. You can see why they’d want to be involved. “Ten Year Old Tom” has cult hit written all over it.