Bojack Horseman canters to season five

Pick of the day: Bojack Horseman, streaming on Netflix.

Bojack Horseman returns to Netflix for season five.

Pick of the day: Bojack Horseman, streaming on Netflix.

The celebrated animated comedy Bojack Horseman returns today for its fifth season, continuing the tale of an angst-ridden anthropomorphic horse, voiced by Arrested Development’s Will Arnett.

Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, this series focuses on Bojack, a horse/man who experienced great success as the lead actor on a corny 1990s sitcom.

Yet despite his wealth and fame, he cuts a self-destructive and lonely figure in a Hollywood populated by other hybrid creatures. If it sounds kind of depressing, it is at times, and some viewers associate the show with the genre that goes under the new portmanteau sad-com.

But rest assured, it is reliably leavened with humour, from a mix of puns, unexpected animal behaviours, and Bojack’s drug and alcohol-fuelled antics.

Arnett is ably joined in the sound booth by GLOW’s Alison Brie, Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, the incomparable Amy Sedaris and Paul F. Tompkins as Bojack’s frenemy Mr Peanutbutter.

Also today, American Vandal returns to Netflix to satirise the true-crime genre. Teenage documentarians Peter (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam (Griffin Gluck) bring their investigation skills to an elite Catholic school where someone has been taking poop-related pranks to new heights.

And the offbeat talk show Norm MacDonald Has a Show makes its Netflix debut under a cloud of controversy. The veteran comedian and writer has been criticised for defending disgraced entertainers Louis CK and Roseanne Barr, then saying “You’d have to have Down syndrome” not to feel sorry for victims of sexual abuse.

And in a twist of irony — his is a talk show, after all — he was disinvited from appearing on American network NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon because of his comments.

Those concerns aside, Norm MacDonald Has a Show is a wildly entertaining effort, featuring the sharp-witted actor David Spade as the first guest.