a nineties standout, The Little Mermaid is currently streaming in Australia on Disney Plus, and in the US on Disney Plus and fuboTV with a 7/10 audience score that speaks for itself. 31 episodes — the right length to tell the story it is telling. Television that earns its era label is rarer than the number of shows attempting it suggests — most of what gets called prestige TV is really just expensive TV. The Little Mermaid is one of the genuine examples: the craft is there in the writing, the performances, and the way it handles its subject matter. Jodi Benson's involvement signals the kind of production that attracts serious talent and uses it properly. Available now on streaming — no excuses left for not watching it.

The Little Mermaid uses its genre premise as cover for asking bigger questions. Disney's The Little Mermaid is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation based on the 1989 Disney film of the same name. It features the adventures of Ariel as a mermaid prior to the events of the film. This series is the first Disney television series to be spun off from a major animated film. Jodi Benson and Jim Cummings lead a cast that brings real weight to the material. The series ran for 3 seasons (1992–1994), building a story that gave its audience time to invest properly. The world-building is meticulous enough to sustain multiple rewatches, with details in early episodes that only make sense later in the run. It delivers reliably on what it promises, which is more than most of its competition manages.

Satisfying on multiple levels — something to enjoy on screen and something to think about after. The run is exactly the right length for the ideas it is exploring. The best science fiction uses its speculative framework to examine things that matter in the real world, and The Little Mermaid does this with more subtlety than the genre usually allows itself. The special effects serve the story rather than substituting for it, which is the mark of a production that understands what genre television is actually for. Jodi Benson anchors it with a performance that makes the more abstract episodes feel personal.