Dear readers, you’re likely aware of this already, but I’ll say it anyway: I am a hypocrite. One minute, I’m complaining about 80s reboots and how we should let the decade die. The next, I’m singing the praises of something from that same era. I can’t help it - I’m a glutton for contradiction. So when I heard about a forgotten adult animated comedy that mixed Archer humor with Miami Vice and Grand Theft Auto style irreverence, my interest was piqued. When I then found out that this show came wrapped in the unforgettable aesthetic of Patrick Nagel (yes, the man behind Duran Duran’s Rio album cover), it became a no-brainer to check it out. None of this is a fever dream, by the way. It’s a show called Moonbeam City.
A product of the creative mind of Scott Gairdner (YouTube, Netflix’s Saturday Morning All-Star Hits!), Moonbeam City had a very short run on Comedy Central way back in 2015, lasting just ten episodes. It is, at its heart, a Miami Vice parody, but with so much more thrown in. Think 80s Miami if it existed in Tron. Mix in a star-studded voice cast including Rob Lowe, Elizabeth Banks, Kate Mara and Will Forte. Then add generous helpings of dysfunctional idiots for characters, more parodying of 80s media and relentless toilet humour. Sounds like a formula for a raging success - which only adds to the mystery of why it bombed so badly.
We’ll get to possible whys in time, but first: the plot. The show sets itself around the members of the Moonbeam City Police Department - namely Dazzle Novak (Lowe), ace detective and full-blown narcissist. He’s effortlessly cool, but crucially, also a lucky idiot. When he’s not out on absurd assignments handed to him by police chief Pizazz Miller (Banks), he’s driving cool cars, chasing girls and hating on his bitter rival Rad Cunningham (Forte), a fellow MCPD investigator and equal opponent in the idiocy stakes. There’s a whole lot of crime to solve and plenty of stupid situations to get into, largely created by Dazzle and Rad themselves. But luckily, the MCPD has one capable employee in Chrysalis Zirconia (Mara). She’s the rookie lab-tech normally stuck with fixing the messes made by the inept police force she serves. As the comedic foil for the show, she often provides some much-needed sanity to the chaos that unfolds each episode.
The ten episodes of Moonbeam City cover all manner of police procedural shenanigans. Early episodes cover oddball setups such as pretentious bowling alley animation artists masquerading as psychotic murderers. In another, Dazzle has to infiltrate a pod of dolphins using a robotic doppel-ganger, falling for one of them in the process (you did read that). If that wasn’t ‘zany’ enough, in another the MCPD are forced to create their own drug epidemic - through a narcotic they produce themselves - to prevent their department getting shut down by the city’s mayor. Whatever the daft plotline, life certainly ain’t dull in Moonbeam City. And that counts for the law enforcers on its streets, as well as the unhinged lunatics in the writers’ room.
No matter how lowbrow it all gets, it is undeniable that the show’s visual direction is fantastic. Patrick Nagel’s art style - all sharp angles, pastel colours and icy mystique - became a visual shorthand for 80s cool, and should have been put to animation years ago. But combined with the trippy neon-skied virtual reality world it’s set in, it’s also clear that Moonbeam City’s inspiration didn’t come from just the 80s - it also came from its by-products. Contemporary niches of the time it was aired, such as vaporwave and synthwave, were also hitting their online peak. And you can tell from certain elements such as the city’s permanent wire-grid background that synthwave music artists such as FM-84 were also a major influence. Does that also mean the show has an appropriately synthy soundtrack? Absolutely - and the main theme is especially a banger.
But at its core, Moonbeam City is still a comedy over a nostalgic art piece, and unfortunately that is where the main flaws lie. It just isn’t consistently funny enough, often being way too random, to be laugh-out-loud all the time. That’s not to say there aren’t some brilliant gags in this show. One scene involving a shootout between cops and mafia on two opposing revolving towers reaches the kind of side-splitting absurdity Police Squad was famous for. But still, there is a definite intention in the writing for this show to peddle a lot of Archer humour with an 80s spin on it. There’s just too much deja vu in the one–liners and farcical situations, and if it’s 2015 when you’ve already got Archer in its prime, you’d just watch that instead, right? If anything, this is probably the chief reason Moonbeam City faded out so fast.
Still, what keeps it engaging - besides the potential of what could have been - is the talent of its voice cast. Lowe, Banks, Mara and Forte all have an enthusiasm for the project that lifts everything up a notch, and give the show the glitz it needs. There may not be much development for their characters given the lack of episodes, but the personality is definitely there. Rob Lowe is especially good as Dazzle - his police cop counterpart has enough cool quips to hide the fact that he’s a rampant idiot. And Will Forte shines just as much as Dazzle’s cop rival, Rad - a whiny, irritating dork who’s desperately trying to be everything he isn’t, often to highly comedic effect. The show is at its best when these two characters are mocking each other on screen, and it’s entirely to the credit of the two providing their voices. Moonbeam City might not hit all the time, but when it does, it’s down to the talent behind the mic.
All in all, your mileage with Moonbeam City will vary as wildly as the girls (and dolphins) Dazzle Novak tries to score with. It’s got a great art style, great music and enough jokes that do land to remain interesting. But it does try too hard to be the Archer for the online nostalgia junkies who made synthwave a thing. All too niche - at least to support a long running TV show. Still, if you’ve ever dug Patrick Nagel, 80s pop, or anything neon-drenched and slightly deranged, this is a fun, fluorescent misfire that’s still worth a spin.
