Big Mouth was a revelation when it premiered in 2017. The vulgar Netflix series about a bunch of tweens and teens going through puberty pushed the boundaries of what animation could get away with (even compared to other edgy cartoons like South Park), while also telling a surprisingly poignant story about the difficulties of growing up. Throw in a stacked voice cast featuring some of the best comedians around (creator Nick Kroll, John Mulaney, Jason Mantzoukas, Jenny Slate, Fred Armisen, Maya Rudolph, Paula Pell, Richard Kind, the list goes on) and the result was an instant hit that kept rolling for eight seasons (and a spinoff) before ending in 2025.

The Big Mouth universe is finished (at least for now), but in its absence, Kroll and his co-creators are back with another Netflix series that shares plenty of that show’s DNA. And while this show isn’t a perfect replacement for Big Mouth — and it’s certainly not a direct sequel or spinoff — it does scratch a similar itch, while also taking the original concept in a clever new direction.

Mating Season is streaming on Netflix now. Created by Andrew Goldberg, Nick Kroll, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett (the same team behind Big Mouth), it moves the story from the utter humiliation of puberty to the struggles of young adulthood, with one other twist: instead of humans, the show is all about animals.

Not animals in a BoJack Horseman way where they act like humans and have jobs; these are literal animals living in the woods with a cast that includes a newly single beta-male bear (Zach Woods), a horny raccoon (Kroll), a self-assured deer with terrible dating luck (June Diane Raphael), and a blossoming lesbian fox (Sabrina Jalees). However, they also act like humans in plenty of ways, including spending lots of time at a bar called The Watering Hole. There are lots of similar puns, but they act more like a backdrop than the main event.

For Kroll, the biggest shift from Big Mouth to Mating Season wasn’t from suburbia to the forest; it was from middle school to young adulthood.

“To be able to make those a continuation of that kind of storytelling, but with, adults in the dating world, it felt like a great opportunity,” he said in an interview with IndieWire.

Whether this shift works is up for debate. While the crude, vulgar sex jokes still mostly land in Mating Season, watching a young adult friend group look for love isn’t exactly an original idea. We’ve seen countless sitcoms with the same basic framework; dirty jokes and cartoon animals only push the concept so far. By comparison, Big Mouth felt unique because we’d never seen another show explore the topic of puberty so ruthlessly and accurately before (animated or otherwise). Mating Season isn’t a revelation in the same way, even if it’s still good for a few laughs.

Mating Season also feels a lot smaller, at least for now. Big Mouth centered on its main, pubescent characters, but their siblings and parents were just as interesting and entertaining. The show’s “Hormone Monster” concept also gradually expanded to reveal an entire parallel dimension full of creatures symbolizing emotions like depression and shame.

Image: Netflix

For Kroll, this narrower cast of characters is also a benefit.

“This is an ensemble show about these four characters, and we’ll really be with them as our way in,” he told IndieWire. “We’ll have a bunch of fun guest stars and start to build our world out, but you really want to focus, especially at the top of a show, on the core group, and the audience really knows who to lock into. If you go too wide too early, it’s just a little confusing and disjointed for an audience to absorb it all.”

Again, I’m not sure I agree. Mating Season‘s four core characters aren’t particularly nuanced (especially the two guys voiced by Kroll and Woods), and the episodes can start to feel repetitive as various tropes and traits repeat themselves: the raccoon is horny, the deer dates terrible men, etc. Meanwhile, the supporting cast all become two-dimensional sitcom guests who only exist to move their episode forward.

None of this means Mating Season is a bad show. It’s just not an amazing one. Kroll set an absurdly high bar with Big Mouth and perhaps it was unfair to assume that his next show would match it. Still, I can’t help but feel disappointed — even if that didn’t stop me from watching all 10 episodes.

Mating Season is streaming on Netflix.