--- title: "Common Side Effects" year: 2025 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/common-side-effects" fi1m_id: "common-side-effects" imdb_id: "tt28093628" tmdb_id: 228878 wikidata_id: "Q130971959" fi1m_score: 80 critics_score: 83 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-10-01T00:42:02.477826+00:00" updated: "2026-10-01T00:42:03.180512+00:00" region: "LT" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Common Side Effects (2025) Created by Joseph Bennett, Steve Hely · 23m · Animation, Drama, Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy ## Identity Common Side Effects - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/common-side-effects - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** common-side-effects - **IMDb ID:** tt28093628 - **TMDB ID:** 228878 - **Wikidata ID:** Q130971959 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28093628/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/228878, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q130971959 **Fi1m score: 80** · Critics 83 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* A cure for everything, and the first people to take it seriously are the DEA > Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely’s animated series about a mushroom that cures everything is a paranoid thriller with a soft heart. It wanders, and its villains are thinner than its heroes, but it held us for all ten episodes. ## Synopsis Marshall Cuso (Dave King), an amateur mycologist, turns up at his high-school reunion to find his old lab partner, Frances Applewhite (Emily Pendergast), and tell her he has found a blue mushroom in Peru that cures anything he has tried it on. Frances now works at Reutical, a drugs company whose boss, Rick Kruger (Mike Judge), would rather such a thing did not exist. Her mother, Sonia (Lin Shaye), is in a care home and failing. Two DEA agents, Harrington (Martha Kelly) and Copano (Joseph Lee Anderson), are already following Marshall. He wants to give the mushroom away. Everyone else wants to own it, burn it or make him disappear. ## Review Marshall Cuso believes he has found a mushroom that cures everything, and *Common Side Effects* spends ten episodes of twenty-three minutes asking what the world would do about that. The answer, according to Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely, who created it, is panic. A drugs company wants it buried or bottled. The DEA wants Marshall in a cell. Marshall, who is not a practical man, wants to hand it out to anyone who is ill. It is a conspiracy thriller drawn in felt-tip colours, it is funnier than it needs to be, and it is kinder than the genre usually allows. We liked it a good deal, with two reservations we will come to. The look is the first thing. Vincent Tsui, Sean Buckelew and Camille Bozec direct, and the characters are drawn with heavy outlines, big heads and small, exact gestures: Marshall’s shoulders go up when he lies, Frances holds a coffee cup like a shield. The backgrounds are something else again. Mushrooms grow in close-up with every gill shaded, spores drift across the frame like dust in a projector beam, and the Peruvian hills Marshall has come back from are green to the point of damp. It is animation that wants you to look at a thing for longer than a joke requires, and we did. Dave King voices Marshall as a man who is right about one enormous thing and wrong about almost everything else, and he never asks for sympathy. Emily Pendergast gives Frances the tired reasonableness of someone who has spent years being the sensible one and is beginning to wonder why. The pair who steal it, though, are the agents. Martha Kelly plays Harrington in a voice so flat you could level a table with it, and Joseph Lee Anderson’s Copano bounces off it, eager and wounded, like a younger brother who keeps asking to drive. Their scenes in the car are the best comedy in the series, and the writers give them more inner life than most live-action police shows manage. Then there is what happens when someone takes the mushroom. The show stops. The lines loosen, the colours run, and the person is shown their own life from an angle they have not had before, in a passage that can last a minute or two without a word of dialogue. Nicolas Snyder scores these moments with slow, humming synths that sit under the pictures rather than on top of them. The first time it happened we went quiet, and we stayed quiet for a while after the credits. It moved us more than we expected, and what did it was simple: a face, held, changing its mind. The reservations. Mike Judge voices Rick Kruger, the man in charge at Reutical, and he is funny, but the corporate side of the story is drawn with a thicker pen than the rest. Kruger and the men around him are venal in the way cartoon executives always are, and the series never finds a reason for them to be anything else. And the middle stretch wanders. Nine writers are credited, and you can feel the writers enjoying their own detours; more than one episode steps sideways from the plot into a minor character and comes back with less than it left with. Tony Christopherson cuts briskly inside scenes, but the season as a whole could have been eight episodes without losing anything we would miss. Bennett’s last series, [*Scavengers Reign*](https://film.one/tv/scavengers-reign), was a cold and lovely thing about people stranded on a planet that wanted to digest them. This is warmer, and it is better company. It belongs to a small group of adult animated series that take their own plots seriously and still remember to be funny, and it does something few of them bother with: it is hopeful, and it earns that by showing people being decent at some cost to themselves. Most critics have been warm about it, and we have little to add beyond the caveats above. Watch it two episodes at a time, in the evening, and resist looking anything up between them. It is a show about a secret, and it is better if you let it keep a few. *Fi1m score 80, published 1 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Common Side Effects worth watching?** *Common Side Effects* is worth watching for anyone who likes a conspiracy thriller with a conscience, and we scored it 80. It is funny, warmly drawn and kinder than the genre usually allows, though the corporate villains are thin and the middle stretch wanders. Take it two episodes at a time and let it keep its secrets. **How long is Common Side Effects, and what is it rated?** *Common Side Effects* has episodes of about 23m. It is an animation and drama series. **Where can I watch Common Side Effects in Lithuania?** *Common Side Effects* is streaming on HBO Max in Lithuania. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How violent or frightening is Common Side Effects, and is it suitable for children?** *Common Side Effects* carries a US TV-MA rating and has no UK certificate, so treat it as adult animation rather than a cartoon for children. The review notes paranoia, drug enforcement agents and a drugs company that wants a man to disappear, but dwells on its warmth and humour rather than on violence. Older teenagers would be fine; younger children are not its audience. **How does Common Side Effects compare to Scavengers Reign?** *Common Side Effects* is warmer and better company than [*Scavengers Reign*](https://film.one/tv/scavengers-reign), Joseph Bennett's earlier series, though both are drawn with the same patient eye for living things. The earlier show is colder, stranger and more frightening, with a richer world and thinner people; this one puts its people first and is funnier. Choose *Scavengers Reign* for awe and *Common Side Effects* for heart. **What should I watch after Common Side Effects?** After *Common Side Effects*, try [*Scavengers Reign*](https://film.one/tv/scavengers-reign) (2023, Fi1m 86): Bennett’s earlier series: colder, stranger, and drawn with the same patient eye for living things. Then [*The Constant Gardener*](https://film.one/film/the-constant-gardener) (2005, Fi1m 82): A drugs company, a cover-up and a decent man who will not let it go; and [*Dopesick*](https://film.one/tv/dopesick) (2021, Fi1m 68): The live-action, true-story version of what a pharmaceutical boardroom will do to protect a product. ### Reviews we read (4) - **IndieWire**, Ben Travers (90/100, inferred): Travers praises the series as an inventive, engaging blend of conspiracy thriller, comedy, drama, and science fiction. He especially highlights its colorful animation, humane optimism, and character-building digressions. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/shows/common-side-effects-adult-swim-review-new-series-1235092206/) - **The AV Club**, Kambole Campbell (B+): The critic finds the series a compelling, distinctive blend of suspense, spirituality, and understated comedy, though it may work better technically than comedically. They praise its expressive animation and precise attention to body language, which gives the characters charm and enables subtle physical comedy. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/common-side-effects-review-tv-adult-swim) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Angie Han (80/100, inferred): Han finds the series distinctive, exciting, and darkly funny, with a timely, hopeful edge. She singles out its precise comic writing and eerie, wondrous nature imagery, while noting that its pacing can feel slow. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/common-side-effects-review-adult-swim-1236120712/) - **Vulture**, Roxana Hadadi (80/100, inferred): Hadadi finds the series compelling and timely, with an optimistic vision of challenging an inequitable health-care system. She especially praises how its fantastical mushroom and absurdist humor illuminate familiar corporate and government abuses. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/common-side-effects-animated-series-review-blue-mushroom-explained.html) ## Details - **Created by:** Joseph Bennett, Steve Hely - **Creator:** Joseph Bennett, Steve Hely - **Director:** Camille Bozec, Vincent Tsui, Sean Buckelew - **Writer:** Steve Hely, Sophie Kriegel, Jon Foor, Emma Barrie, Jean Kyoung Frazier, Daniel Schofield, Dave King, Karey Dornetto, Joseph Bennett - **Editor:** Tony Christopherson - **Music:** Nicolas Snyder - **Producer:** Max Minor, Paige Boudreaux, Jacey Bradley - **Cast:** Dave King as Marshall Cuso (voice); Emily Pendergast as Frances Applewhite (voice); Mike Judge as Rick Kruger (voice); Martha Kelly as Agent Harrington (voice); Joseph Lee Anderson as Agent Copano (voice); Alan Resnick as Zane (voice); Lin Shaye as Sonia (voice); Shalita Grant as Female DEA Agent (voice) - **Runtime:** 23m - **Release (Lithuania):** 2 February 2025 - **Genres:** Animation, Drama, Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHN9QbWytcE ## Where to watch in Lithuania - HBO Max: streaming *Checked 2026-10-01.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, HU, IE, IL, IS, IT, LT, MX, NL, NO, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SI, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Scavengers Reign* (2023), Fi1m 86: Bennett’s earlier series: colder, stranger, and drawn with the same patient eye for living things. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/scavengers-reign.md) - *Undone* (2019): Another animated series for adults that uses the medium to show a mind coming apart. - *The Constant Gardener* (2005), Fi1m 82: A drugs company, a cover-up and a decent man who will not let it go. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-constant-gardener.md) - *Mind Game* (2004): Japanese animation that changes style mid-scene and treats a trip as a moral education. - *Dopesick* (2021), Fi1m 68: The live-action, true-story version of what a pharmaceutical boardroom will do to protect a product. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/dopesick.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/common-side-effects