Tom and Jerry Special Shorts

Tom and Jerry Special Shorts is an American animated comedy television series developed by Uncle Grandpa creator, Peter Browngardt and is based on Tom and Jerry by Hanna Barbera. The series was made to promote the 2021 Tom & Jerry movie, which was directed by Tim Story and released and ended on HBO Max on February 20, 2021. For unknown reasons, the series was removed from the website but made its return in July.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It stays extremely faithful to the original Tom and Jerry shorts.
 * 2) Splendid animation that recaptures the charm of the classic shorts, plus Tom and Jerry's character designs are extremely faithful to their designs in the early '40s.
 * 3) * To make things even better, the animation was made by the same people who also worked on Looney Tunes Cartoons.
 * 4) Creative writing, including from Peter Browngardt's crew.
 * 5) The writers truly know Tom and Jerry's personalities in this series because they had watched the original shorts.
 * 6) The slapstick retains the energy from the original shorts.
 * 7) William Hanna's archive recordings as Tom and Jerry are reused.
 * 8) * Andrew Dickman provides most of Tom's iconic screams.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The animation in "The House That Cat Built", while decent, is noticeably weaker than the animation in "On a Roll".
 * 2) It sadly did not last very long since there are only two cartoon shorts in this series. This also meant that characters such as Spike, Tyke, Butch, Tuffy, or Toodles Galore couldn't appear in this show.

Reception
Tom and Jerry Special Shorts received largely positive reviews from various fans of the original shorts for its animation, slapstick, writing, and faithfulness to the original shorts, calling it a tribute to William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, creators and directors of the original shorts. It holds an 8.5/10 on the Internet Movie Database with only one user review. The user said that the crew of this series masterfully captured the spirit of the cat-and-mouse duo.

Trivia

 * This is so far the only Tom and Jerry series to last shorter than The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (1980) and The Tom and Jerry Show (1975), which both of those shows lasted for one season.
 * The 1975 version had 16 episodes while the 1980 version had 15 episodes.
 * The character designs of the cat-and-mouse duo in this series are drawn based on their mid-1940s character designs, in stark contrast to other Tom and Jerry shows since Tom & Jerry Kids where the cat-and-mouse duo is commonly drawn based on their most familiar late-1940s/early-1950s character designs. This is very noticeable in Tom's character design, whom is drawn with a more rounded face and two whiskers twirled together like a mustache.