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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Rich Pelley

‘We didn’t set out to make a show for animals!’ The Netflix seal cartoon that’s a huge hit … with pets

A goldendoodle has his nose up to the screen showing two large cartoon seals.
Seal of approval? Ozzy gets up close to watch the Netflix show Sealook. Photograph: Courtesy Rich Pelley

Ozzy the four-month-old goldendoodle isn’t normally allowed on the sofa. But today he has been granted special privileges because I’ve come round specifically to watch TV with him. We’re not watching Paw Patrol, Scooby-Doo, or even Crufts. We’re watching Sealook, the Netflix kids’ cartoon about a colony of seals that dogs and cats online are supposedly obsessed with. But is this really a thing? And will Ozzy care?

I hit play. A gang of wide-eyed pastel-coloured seals are in a slapstick scrape. There’s no dialogue: they mostly lie around on the ice, and try to annoy each other by doing silly things like making funny noises, throwing snowballs or keeping each other awake. Ozzy seems more interested in chewing his pizzle stick – which I discover, slightly too late, is the dried penis of a bull. Then again, perhaps this is just canine second-screening: Sealook on the telly, bull penis in the mouth.

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