| Haha, You Clowns | |
|---|---|
| Genre | |
| Created by | Joe Cappa |
| Written by |
|
| Starring | Joe Cappa |
| Composer | Delicate Steve |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 7 |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
|
| Producer | Rochelle Perry |
| Running time | 11 minutes |
| Production company | Williams Street |
| Original release | |
| Network | Adult Swim |
| Release | October 19, 2025 – present |
Haha, You Clowns is an American adult animated comedy television series created by Joe Cappa for Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim. It is based on the 2023 Adult Swim Smalls short film of the same name, and is the first Small to be picked up as a full series. [1] The series premiered on Adult Swim on October 19, 2025, [1] [2] although the first episode premiered on Adult Swim's YouTube channel two weeks prior on October 7, 2025.
Tom Campbell is a local weatherman who lives in a big house with his three sons: Tristan, Preston, and Duncan. While Tom is still grieving the death of his beloved wife, his sons are always there to keep him grounded.
Joe Cappa taught himself how to animate and began making independent animated videos for social media in 2021. [3] He was inspired by Mike Judge, Australian animator Jarrad Wright, and Sick Animation founder Marc M. [6] In 2022, one of Cappa's videos, a Teletubbies riff called "Gabagoblins," went viral on TikTok, and Dave Hughes, executive producer of Adult Swim's Smalls program for short online videos, reached out to Cappa to pitch him short videos. [3] From fall of 2022 to fall 2023, Cappa made seven 2-3-minute Haha, You Clowns shorts for the Adult Swim Smalls channel, in which he introduced the characters of Preston, Tristan, Duncan, and their dad, as well as voicing all four of them himself. The series was based on an animated short he made in 2022 called "Halloween Ep," that's a parody of the sitcom Home Improvement . In it, Cappa voiced Tim Allen and the actors who played his three sons on the show, with all of them adoring him despite Tim behaving awfully. When adapting the short to a web series, Cappa made the father and sons all original characters with different personalities from his Home Improvement video. He created the show as a riff on wholesome family programming like 7th Heaven and the 1992 Mormon film The Buttercream Gang. [7]
Following the web series, Adult Swim commissioned a script for a pilot episode of a quarter-hour series of Haha, You Clowns, based on the shorts. After Cappa wrote the script, Adult Swim announced that they had ordered a 10-episode first season of the show in June of 2024. [1]
Joe Cappa wrote the pilot, but the rest of the first season is entirely co-written by Cappa and his brother Dave, who lives in England and writes the show with Joe via text messaging [8] . When Adult Swim greenlit the show, Cappa didn't know any writers and hired his brother. The series is loosely based on the Cappa brothers' relationship with their dad. [3] Cheri Oteri voices a character in the eighth episode that the Cappas specifically wrote with her in mind. [9]
Cappa wants the animation style to seem crude and instructs new animators to draw the show as if it's "like a live-action director was given an animated show, and they don’t know how to draw that well, and they have to somehow execute their idea." [3] [10]
Cappa's wife Kirsten voices many of the female characters on the show, including Duncan's girlfriend Katie. Cappa hired musician Delicate Steve to score the show with guitar riffs in the spirit of 90s sitcoms. [11] The show is made in Adobe Animate. [12]
Joe Cappa wrote all of the episodes, with Dave Cappa co-writing since the second episode.
| No. | Title | Animation directed by | Storyboarded by | Original release date | US viewers (millions) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Movie Night" | Nick Bertonazzi Jr. | Clay Morrow & Lindsey DeMars | October 19, 2025 | N/A | |
The boys notice their dad keeps leaving their movie nights early. When Preston gets a recommendation for the horror movie "Terror Within," he thinks it might be just what they need to bond over movie night again. | ||||||
| 2 | "Viral" | Nick Bertonazzi Jr. | Amish Kumar & Citlalli Anderson | October 26, 2025 | N/A | |
The boys and the news staff all try to push Tom to dance during his weather report to make a viral video. After attempts to get him to dance fail, Tom has his moment when he calls his boys to warn them about a coming tornado. | ||||||
| 3 | "Bomber Jacket" | Nick Bertonazzi Jr. | Eva Sterrett | November 2, 2025 | N/A | |
After a night out at Casa Baja, Preston loses his favorite bomber jacket and is unable to find it, making him act more rude and irritable to everyone, until he gets a house visit from a pair of cops. | ||||||
| 4 | "Plane" | Nick Bertonazzi Jr. | Jackie Acki Lewis & Kiwon Lee | November 9, 2025 | N/A | |
The family takes a plane ride to Cancun, but Tom has trouble coping with the shaky flight without his wife. However, when Duncan suffers from a peanut allergy, Tom finds the courage to help him. | ||||||
| 5 | "Duncan Holds a Baby" | Nick Bertonazzi Jr. | Clay Morrow & Lindsey DeMars | November 16, 2025 | TBD | |
The boys plan a party for their dental hygienist, Valerie, and her new baby. But Duncan is afraid of dropping the baby, leading him to seek advice from Jeanette. | ||||||
| 6 | "Dad's Birthday" | Nick Bertonazzi Jr. | Amish Kumar & Citlalli Anderson | November 23, 2025 | TBD | |
The boys throw a surprise party for their dad's birthday at their house, but Tom gets increasingly panicked when his old frat brother Bruski tells the boys about his heavy drinking days in college, and when he went "Hulk Mode." Later, the boys learn about how Tom turned away from alcoholism, and his connection with a Chinese student from that time. | ||||||
| 7 | "Hot Tub" | Nick Bertonazzi Jr. | Jackie Acki Lewis & Kiwon Lee | November 30, 2025 | TBD | |
The boys set up their nana's old hot tub at their house, but forget to properly sterlize it first, leading all of them to become horribly sick. | ||||||
| 8 | "Call to the Battalion" | TBA | TBA | December 7, 2025 | TBD | |
| 9 | "Therapy" | TBA | TBA | December 14, 2025 | TBD | |
| 10 | "Improv" | TBA | TBA | December 21, 2025 | TBD | |
Haha, You Clowns premiered on October 26, 2025 on Adult Swim, with episodes airing weekly and having their streaming premieres the next day on HBO Max. [10] The show had its world premiere at San Diego Comic Con on July 25th, 2025. [13]
Haha, You Clowns has received positive reviews from The Wall Street Journal and BubbleBlabber. [14] [15]