Sweet tooth, netflix review: a not-too-sickly half term treat with dashes of classic spielberg

Anita Singh Arts and Entertainment Editor 04 June 2021 5:00am BST SWEET TOOTH (Netflix) is rated “12” and children might find it easier viewing than parents. That’s not because it’s

childish, but because it features the sorts of things that pluck on parents’ heartstrings. A father trying to protect his son from the big, bad world. A boy setting out on a quest to find

his mother. It has a lovable child at its heart, albeit one with antlers. The series, produced by Robert Downey Jr and his wife, Susan, is a post-apocalyptic fable based on Jeff Lemire’s

comic books. A virus has escaped from a lab and ravaged the globe, if you can imagine that. At the same time, children are being born as animal-human hybrids: beautiful little babies with

pig noses or puppy ears. One of them is Gus, a deer-boy being raised by his father (an earnest Will Forte). When we meet Gus, he’s 10. It’s a big ask for a young actor to carry a series, but

Christian Convery manages it: as sweet as the title suggests but, crucially, not cutesy or annoying. The CGI is kept to a minimum – just those antlers and some waggly ears. Things go wrong

for Gus and his father, and the boy sets off across the country with Tommy Jepperd, a man mountain played by Game of Thrones’ Nonso Anozie. He is reluctant to have Gus tag along, but will

the boy melt his stony heart? Spoiler alert: yes. But it’s not too schmaltzy. There is a great deal of jeopardy along the way, but the scenes always come back to something reassuring, and

there is no gore. It’s reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s 1980s output. The original comics were dark but things have been lightened for the Netflix transfer. When truly awful things happen, 

they are left to your imagination. Two stories run parallel to Gus’s. A woman named Aimee (Dania Ramirez) installs herself in an abandoned zoo, but she’s quite dull. A much better plot

thread belongs to Adeel Akhtar (Back to Life) as a doctor faced with a terrible moral choice. Akhtar has one of those faces that conveys an essential goodness and a sort of helpless

vulnerability, regardless of what his character might be doing. Filming took place in New Zealand, and the backdrop is beautiful countryside rather than a dystopian hellscape. The pandemic

references are almost comically current: people looking utterly panicked at the sight of a maskless visitor, or worrying about Big Pharma. It’s a fantasy series very much rooted in the here

and now.