Picture Credits: Netflix
Rounding out Netflix’s slate for the 2026 Annecy International Film Festival was Living The Dream, which was co-presented alongside Keeping Up With The Joneses from Warner Bros. Animation. We got a big deep dive into the series and what we can expect beyond the initial announcement, which came late last year alongside its cast reveal.
Presenting the new Netflix series were Sarah Fell, senior vice president and head of studio for Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe, and George Gendi, creator, executive producer, and one of the main voices for the show. Throughout the presentation, Gendi presented clips and concept art and explained the background of the series, which he described as a spiritual successor to his show Apple & Onion.
From scrapped post-apocalyptic settings to directly roasting real-life studio executives and the modern-day corporate hellscape, here is exactly how Living the Dream came to be, straight from the creator himself.
First, a bit of background on the show.
At the center of Living the Dream are Ray and Des, two ambitious yet struggling best friends working as low-level social media “Impact Champions” at Ecofood’s UK branch. They are overseen by Anne, their frantic, deeply stressed manager who desperately wants to climb the corporate ladder by impressing Scott, her loud and dismissive American boss. Rounding out the chaotic office environment is a colorful cast of eccentric coworkers, including an antagonistic sales duo made up of Harold and Big C—a posh boy with an inferiority complex who pretends to be tough. The office floor is further populated by Ashley, a bubbly American HR rep embodying overly cheerful corporate culture, plus Bronya and Priya.
How Living The Dream Is A Spiritual Successor to Apple & Onion
Picture Credit: Adult Swim
Gendi’s journey to Netflix’s adult animation roster actually started at Cartoon Network with his beloved kids’ series, Apple & Onion. As the show matured, so did its humor. According to Gendi, executives eventually realized the show was “two jokes away from an adult show,” prompting them to experiment with an Adult Swim time slot.
But when it came time for a third season, Warner Bros. Animation boss Sam Register (who has a surprise appearance in this show – sort of) had a different plan.
“I finally got the call from Sam, and he said, ‘We’re not going to do Season 3 of Apple & Onion. You are free from that forever,'” Gendi recalled to the Annecy crowd. “Instead, I’m going to give you a development deal, and I want you to make us an adult show from the beginning this time and make it all British this time.”
Initially, Gendi designed the new protagonists, Ray and Des, as human iterations of his previous characters, which he voiced alongside Richard Ayoade. However, the studio quickly pushed back, telling him, “I’ve given you a deal to make a new show. Don’t give me the same show.” To get around this, the side character, Des, was replaced with British comedian Javone Prince.
Ditching the Apocalypse for Corporate Despair
With his protagonists locked in, Gendi needed a world for them to inhabit. His first instinct was to go sci-fi to differentiate it from his past work. “I put him in this post-apocalyptic world,” Gendi said. But, as we were in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, executives quickly vetoed the idea out of genre fatigue.
Instead, Gendi looked backward at his own real-world experiences in the animation industry to create the fictional, painfully hypocritical company “Ecofood.”
“Through my time at Cartoon Network Studios, I got a really good taste of corporate culture, of what it was like to be in a corporation,” Gendi explained. “With all the emails you get, like, ‘there’s some mental health resources, and we care about you,’ and it’s like, well, what about my deadline, sir? Oh, no, no, no, just read this leaflet. It’s like, ‘You’re part of our story, let’s build this together.’ Next day, someone gets fired.”
Modeling the Boss After a Real-Life Studio Exec
Living the Dream follows Ray and Des, two low-level “Impact Champions” on Ecofood’s social media team based out of London, who are desperately trying to survive their frantic UK boss, Anne (voiced by Julia Davis). Anne, in turn, is obsessed with impressing her boss: a loud, brash, dismissive American executive based in LA named Scott.
Before, we mentioned that Sam Register would play an additional role in the series. Gendi directly modeled the character after Warner Bros. Animation President, who was in the audience and was a good sport about it and apparently signed a likeness contract.
“I couldn’t think of anyone. Sam. He’s over there… He really fit the bill,” Gendi joked to the audience. “I couldn’t call him Sam. I tried to call him Sam, but he said, call him Scott.” Register even signed a likeness contract to allow the design—which features a prominent nose based on how Gendi’s colleagues viewed Register from below on Zoom calls—to be used in the show.
The London office of this fictitious company is seen as the inferior office and often brushed aside and dismissed, which does remind me of certain companies that will remain nameless.
Living the Dream. (L to R) George Gendi, creator and voice of Ray, Javone Prince, voice of Des, in Living the Dream. Cr. Courtesy of Tom Harrison/Netflix © 2025
The Netflix Pitch and the “Radio Play” Method
Just two weeks before his official pitch to Netflix, Gendi happened to meet with Netflix animation executive Julio Bonet, director of animated series at Netflix (UK/EMEA), who outlined exactly what the streamer was hunting for.
“He told me exactly what they were looking for. And I’m like, oh, I’ve got just the thing,” Gendi laughed. “He was looking for exactly what we had been doing, which was a loosely serialized adult buddy comedy set in the UK.”
Netflix loved the pitch and picked up the 8-episode series, though they did ask Gendi to shift the focus slightly from the boys’ initially planned side hustles to a more grounded “office sitcom” structure, leading to the creation of a rival sales team and an eccentric HR department.
To maintain the show’s highly specific, improvisational comedic tone, Gendi developed a unique production pipeline. Rather than just handing a script to storyboard artists, he records the entire episode himself first.
“I would give the storyboarders a radio play, and they would put that on the timeline, and that’s what they would board to,” Gendi revealed. “Once a script is done, I will take that script, I will start recording it, all in my voice, for all the characters… If it feels good while there’s nothing there, then you can only get better, hopefully.”
This method allows the humor to flow naturally, driven by the characters’ quiet, existential dread rather than traditional punchlines. And working with a streamer offered him breathing room. “Time wasn’t much of an issue, because for Netflix… it doesn’t have to be 22 [minutes],” he noted.
Finding the Humor in Desperation
Ultimately, Living the Dream is aiming for a distinctly British, observational style of comedy that marries the mundane with the surreal. London is the quintessential home of the show, and its backdrop is equally part of the show’s character, given all the clips and stills shown mimicking famous London landmarks and the culture of the capital of the UK.
“What I want to talk about quickly is the humor that I try to get a lot of in the show… of just humans living their lives, going through life desperate,” Gendi concluded. “That can be funny. Underlying emotions showing in the outward acting… You just have to imagine it and act it out a lot.”
That was perhaps demonstrated best by a rather depressing rendition of James Blunt by the main characters, which you’ll have to watch the show if you want to see it, but audiences were treated to the scene in the script with a recording of Gendi playing out the roles and then the end result.
Audiences for the panel were treated to a number of goodies related to the show, including this excellently (not) put-together press note from Impact Champions themselves, Des and Ray. We were also treated to a tennis-style visor and a lanyard that now allow me to roam around Annecy as an Impact Champion myself.
Picture Credit: Kasey Moore / What’s on Netflix
First Impressions of Living The Dream
Adult animation comedy is tricky at Netflix and in the UK, where this series is produced at the Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe, hasn’t had many swings in the space, and now they’ve got two: this and Alley Cats. Both are fundamentally British in nature, but both have recognizable universal tropes attached to them. I’ve got to admit, when the first picture for it came out, I didn’t have much hope, as the genre has been a bit stale lately. But as soon as Gendi began explaining the concept and sharing clips, I got it instantly, became an advocate for it, and hope it delivers. Not everything worked but enough did that it’s now high up on my watch list.
Also, just a personal note, I found Gendi to be one of the most honest and insightful speakers throughout my entire week in Annecy. Kudos for that. It’s nice have someone naturally talk about their show without being overly scripted.
That’s all from the Living Your Dream panel. Don’t forget the series presented alongside Keeping Up With The Joneses, which we won’t be doing coverage on because it’s sadly not coming to Netflix, so a bit beyond our remit!
We’ll keep you posted more on Living Your Dream as and when we get more.
