Let The Great North Be Your Respite From Wintry Murder Mysteries

One of TV's best comfort watches is back this Sunday, just in time to offer an alternative to the recent spate of wintry murder mysteries. The Great North kicks off its fourth season on January 7 with an episode that features so much of what makes it such an endearing and quirkily funny show.

"Bad Speecher Adventure" sees Ham (Paul Rust) spiraling out about an upcoming assignment in his public speaking class. As is usually the case on this show, he turns to his family for help. What he gets instead are three sample speeches, each one a familiar movie parody that shows off the series’s command of pop culture references and its own well-drawn characters.

While it's not a spin-off of Bob's Burgers, The Great North certainly feels like it takes place within the same universe. It helps to have the connective tissue of animation studio Bento Box, as well as creators (and sisters) Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin, who both wrote for Bob's. Both shows share a focus on family, good-natured humor, and a worldview that kids are the weirdest. The fictional setting of Lone Moose, Alaska, is the show's defining characteristic and the closest thing it has to a defining concept. They live life differently that far north, as shows like Northern Exposure have so memorably depicted. Patriarch Beef Tobin (Nick Offerman) moved his family up there after his ex-wife left them, and the series frequently falls back on the overbearing single dad stuff, which Offerman plays so well.

But, as the season premiere shows, it's the kids who really define the singular, oddball vibe of The Great North. Ham's neuroses and hobbies help him stand out as a typically atypical teenager, rather than some false idea of a "regular" kid. He's also probably the most well-adjusted gay teen on TV, neither flattened out for mass consumption nor problematized for drama. His sister, Judy, is voiced by Jenny Slate, which is a very fun thing for any animated character to be. Judy has big dreams and artistic ambitions, she's thoughtful and has weird passions, and she speaks to an imaginary Alanis Morisette who appears within the aurora borealis. Youngest son Moon (Aperna Nancherla) wears a bear onesie at all times, the most overt invitation for comparison to Bob's Burgers and Tina's omnipresent bunny ears.

Temperamentally, The Great North is the polar (get it?) opposite of shows like A Murder at the End of the World and True Detective: Night Country. All of those shows have also made terrific use of the isolation of northern settings (remote Iceland and small-town Alaska, respectively) to contribute to a sense of danger and a justice that exists outside the law. As weird as it sounds, The Great North does something similar, though it swaps the notion of pursuing your weird little passions for crime and murder. In all cases, the remote northern setting keeps (some of) the world at bay.

As with Bob's Burgers, The Great North knows its way around pop culture parody. This week's episode offers takes on Top Gun, The Matrix, and Good Will Hunting. And while none of these subjects are the least bit obscure, one features a pleasingly bizarre celebrity cameo, while another boasts a "Goose" joke that is incredibly funny. They also offer some great comedic material for stars Will Forte and Dulcé Sloan, as Beef's oldest son Wolf and his wife Honeybee.

Maybe submerging yourself in a warm parka of murder mystery is exactly what you're looking for on a Sunday night. But if you're looking for something more sweetly unstressful, The Great North is the kind of warm family comedy that's both funnier and more endearing than you might expect.

The Great North Season 4 premieres January 7th at 9:30 PM ET on Fox. Subsequent episodes air Sundays at 9:00 PM. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.