HAPPY! (2017)

There is a moment in the first episode of Happy! where Christopher Meloni's Nick Sax, freshly shot, hypothermic, and spiraling toward death in an alley, begins taking instructions from a small blue flying unicorn with a perky demeanor and a children's show voice. The unicorn is named Happy. Nick is not pleased. Neither expectation nor precedent prepares you for how completely this premise works.

Happy! premiered on Syfy on December 6, 2017. It is based on the 2012 four-issue graphic novel by Grant Morrison and artist Darick Robertson. Morrison is the Scottish comic writer responsible for The Invisibles, All-Star Superman, and many other works that take ordinary genre premises and push them into genuinely strange places. Happy! the comic is compact and violent and funny. Happy! the series, developed by Brian Taylor, takes that core and expands it into eight episodes without losing the original's sense of controlled derangement.

What Kind of Christmas Show Is This

A fair question. Nick Sax is a former NYPD detective turned hitman turned functional disaster, and the series dumps him into the New York underworld at Christmas. A little girl named Hailey has been kidnapped by a man in a Santa Claus suit. Happy, her imaginary unicorn friend, seeks out Nick because Nick is, technically, Hailey's estranged father. Nick does not know this. Happy is relentlessly, unironically optimistic. The show gets most of its comedy from the collision between Happy's childlike enthusiasm and Nick's absolute refusal to care about anything.

The Christmas setting is not decoration. Mall Santas, holiday lights, department store windows, and the whole apparatus of American commercial Christmas run through every episode. The villain is specifically a Santa. The kidnapping happens at Christmas because Christmas is when children are most effectively lured by the idea of Santa Claus. The show is doing something real with the holiday, not just using it as backdrop.

Christopher Meloni Is Doing the Work of His Career Here

Meloni spent twelve seasons playing Detective Stabler on Law & Order: SVU, a role built almost entirely on controlled intensity. Nick Sax is the inverse: a man who has discarded every good instinct he ever had and built something filthy and functional in its place. Meloni plays him as genuinely funny without softening the character's ugliness. That balance is hard to maintain for eight episodes. He maintains it.

Happy is voiced by Patton Oswalt, who replaced Bobby Moynihan after the pilot. That is not a minor detail. Oswalt brings a specific quality to the voice: sincerely sweet without being cloying, confused without being stupid. Happy genuinely does not understand why Nick is the way he is. Oswalt plays that bewilderment straight, which makes it funnier than any wink at the camera would.

Grant Morrison's Source Material and What Taylor Did With It

Morrison's graphic novel is a tight, self-contained story. Brian Taylor, who directed seven of the eight first-season episodes, makes choices that expand the universe considerably. New characters, subplots, and a wider portrait of New York organized crime surround the central story. Some of these additions work better than others. The mob politics occasionally run long. But Taylor has genuine visual style, and the show looks more expensive than Syfy's budget history would suggest.

The original graphic novel also had a feature film in development before the series was made. In 2012, RZA of Wu-Tang Clan was reportedly in talks to direct a film adaptation. That version never happened. Given how much the series uses its episode count to develop Nick's backstory and relationships, the feature film format probably would have been too small for this material.

The Tone Is Very Specific and Not for Everyone

This is a show where graphic violence sits next to cartoon sequences, where a blue unicorn discusses the existential tragedy of being an imaginary friend, and where Christmas is simultaneously warm and menacing. That combination puts some viewers off immediately. The violence is not stylized in a way that creates distance. It is funny and also uncomfortable, which is the Morrison mode.

Rotten Tomatoes aggregated an 81% critics score for the first season. That number reflects genuine split opinion: the show earns strong responses from people on both sides. The viewers who find the tonal mix incoherent are not wrong about what the show is doing. They just don't like it. The viewers who find it exhilarating are also not wrong.

Syfy cancelled the show after two seasons in June 2019. Season 2 moved away from the Christmas setting and broadened the mythology. Season 1, taken alone, is a complete and very strange Christmas story about a terrible man finding something worth saving, guided by a unicorn he can barely stand to look at.