My Brother the Minotaur is a new animated series premiering this Friday April 24th on AppleTV. Lorcan is a boy… who also happens to be a minotaur. His younger brother Charlie and their friends join him to learn more about his true self. The concept has been with creator and associate producer Donal Morgan for a long time. “It started back in college, coming-up with different ideas, and one of them was: What would it be like if a young Minotaur kid was living in the human world? How would they fit in? In 2014, I was working with Dog Ears on Puffin Rock. I was developing stories and came back to this one, sketching a young Minotaur boy dressed like a human, pulling his hood up to cover his underdeveloped horns. It just felt like a nice way to explore coming of age, masculinity, going through those complex changes, emotions and different feelings.”

I also asked Morgan what he discovered about himself through the process of making this series. “I learned how to be a better writer over the course of 12 years from conception to end product. Trusting the process. Things take time. But also really valuing being surrounded by the right people. I really felt like I was in the right place at the right time back in 2014 working with Dog Ears on Puffin Rock. I really appreciated that kind of collaboration with the right people and being nurtured and encouraged to keep going and to trust it and to see where it goes. Not getting overwhelmed. It just takes time.”

Fionnuala Deane, managing director of Dog Ears, serves as executive producer. She told me how much she loves the core bond between Lorcan and Charlie. “It’s really familiar and recognizable to anyone who’s a sibling that you love your brother. They drive each other crazy. They fall in and fall out as quickly as anything can happen in a day.” Deane also believes the series will have a major impact on kids. “There’s a thing that happens sometimes in children’s content — people are inclined to dumb it down for the kids. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to say that kids are really smart, and this group of kids in particular are really smart, and left to their own devices, they’ll probably figure out things much faster than the adults. To support that type of thinking and to encourage kids to try things out, make mistakes… that’s where learning is. If kids are encouraged to embrace their differences, their friends’ weirdness, whatever it is, that’s all really cool. And sometimes that makes it all the more exciting and all the more interesting to be around people like that.”

John McDaid is the creative director of Dog Ears and a producer of My Brother the Minotaur. He loves its atmosphere. “The vibe that it captures is something that we love in kind of The Goonies or ’80s classics… that swept you away into another world.” The show takes place on an island, creating some interesting dynamics, and accompanied by gorgeous scenery. McDaid revealed that, “We struggled in early development about how we’d make a statement about the wider world but still keep it on an island and self-contained. But in the end… it’s very defined, and you can pick and choose. And that came a lot from Donal right at the outset. When he came up with the concept, he had the whole island mapped out and the different families who lived in different places. We tied these threads together. An island is like a little sandbox, a playground for creativity to flourish.”

Cartoon Saloon co-founder Nora Twomey (director of features My Father’s Dragon and Oscar nominated The Breadwinner) is also a producer of this series. “It’s such a wonderful, mystical story. There’s such a beautiful evolution to the story as well over the entire series. That was really attractive to us.” Twomey values the working partnership with Dog Ears and Apple. She’s excited for the release of this show, as well as upcoming Cartoon Saloon features from Louise Bagnall (Julián) and Tomm Moore (Kindred Spirits). When it comes to Minotaur, it represents a core theme for CS: The curiosity of young people. “Not being afraid to ask questions is something that we as storytellers, as well as the stories themselves and what they present to the audience, is something that gives young people a lot of power. We all look for stories as a companion through life, no matter what stage of life we’re at. We’re always looking for some kind of story to help us through. Stories like My Brother the Minotaur that give you license for that curiosity are very important.”