TV REVIEW: Knuckles

Good day to you ladies and gents, it has been almost 24 hours since I watched the new Knuckles show on Paramount+ and I have been thinking about it a lot, thinking about how we ended up with the show that we got. The discourse I’ve witnessed on Twitter/X has been interesting with various takes ranging from heavy negativity to some positivity and of course the memes (the latter of which has been fun to see).

So what is my take? Well, it wasn’t a great show, but it wasn’t a complete dumpster fire. Some may say I’m being a little too lenient and maybe I am. But I have endured far worse TV in my life and Knuckles, while numerous elements of this show left me frustrated, confused and mentally fatigued, there were aspects I enjoyed.

Okay so let’s get the premise out of the way. Knuckles takes place after the second Sonic film where the titular character is trying to figure out his purpose in life. He decides to take on an apprentice in the form of Wade, the deputy sheriff of Green Hills and from there shenanigans ensue as the two of them journey out of town on a quest while being pursued by shady agents who need to capture Knuckles for a dangerous man who used to work under Dr. Robotnik.

On paper, the outline for this story doesn’t sound too bad and there are small aspects of the plot that I liked and could see working a lot better. However, the writing just isn’t there. The story touches on some interesting ideas but doesn’t dive deep enough for them to resonate on the level that they want it to. This leads to moments of drama, stakes or emotion ringing hollow. It also doesn’t help that this show is very kid-friendly to an absurd degree. I know that sounds like a bad complaint considering Sonic as a franchise has always been aimed at children, but as I’ve always said, content aimed at younger audiences doesn’t have to be devoid of good writing and depth. Unfortunately, here we have all of the basic codes and conventions of a kid’s film or TV show, but all of the annoying humour and silly elements that made my viewing experience insufferable at times. Things start out promisingly enough in the first episode, two isn’t too bad and with some small exceptions, episode three is where things go downhill. In addition, for a show called Knuckles, he’s not in it nearly as much as he should be to the point where I could argue that the trailers tricked us. It’s more of the Wade show featuring Knuckles with the amount of time Wade’s given where whole chunks of the show don’t even feature Knuckles on-screen which was crazy.

Let’s move on to characters. Knuckles, when he is the focus, is still good. He’s still the tough and naive character we liked from the previous Sonic film and Idris Elba injects plenty of charm and humour into the character. Adam Pally as Wade, I have no beef against Pally, but his character was tough to get behind. He was decent comedic relief as a smaller part in the films, but to make him a main character and still act dumb and useless made me dislike him a lot. Kid Cudi and Ellie Taylor as agents Mason and Willoughby were annoying yet decent, I liked their characters in principle but the execution was messy. They gave me Jessie and James from Team Rocket energy. Julian Barratt as Jack Sinclair was pretty fun but that was mostly due to Barratt’s acting. The best human characters in the show were the bowling announcers played by Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel, they were genuinely hilarious and they kept things interesting.

As for the presentation, visually the show is solid. We’re dealing with an animated character in live-action which is costly for TV and while the action scenes don’t match the scope or choreography of the films, there are some decent moments and CGI mostly looks good, especially with Knuckles. However, sometimes the animation, lighting and compositing on Knuckles or some of the action scenes don’t hold up as well. The score from Tom Howe is okay but isn’t very memorable and again we’ve got another project in this Sonic shared universe that avoids using music from the video games. It’s like they’re afraid of it or something. Instead, we are treated to an onslaught of licensed music with multiple needle drops used across the whole show! It felt like they picked the most overplayed and random songs on purpose. It was a horrible experience.

So to conclude, Knuckles is certainly a show that exists. I knew it was going to be a light-hearted side adventure to hold us over before Sonic 3 drops in December and I liked what I saw from the trailers. However, this show is a confusing entity. I have to question who this is for. It isn’t for Sonic fans as it only features a certain amount of Knuckles and some decent video game references which isn’t for the six-episode series. I guess if you’re a parent and need something basic for your kids to watch then this could be passable, however, you could spend your time watching something else.