Far be it from me to drag down what might be a perfect show for little kids. However I was expecting at least the personalities of characters from the original movie to be in place:
Alex The Lion: friendly and constantly suppresses his predator instincts
Gloria The Hippo: Opinionated and empowered
Melman The Giraffe: Hypochondriac extreme, sick all the time
Marty The Zeba: Carefee and often careless, clumsy, friends with Alex
Add to this a no show of popular characters that were in the movie:
King Julien The Lemur: Smug and vain ruler, loves to move it move it
Mort: King Julien's lackey, completely ingratiating, quite brave actually
Top Secret Penguins:
Kowalski,Skipper, Private, and Rico.
Now I understand the main characters in here are supposed to be younger, possibly pre-teen, but this particular show could've used ANY character or theme at all as the ones presented in here act pretty well all the same as any other kid's show. Vanilla and boring with no real distinctive traits of any kind and plenty of songs to teach little children the basics of life. Wow.
It's a waste to call this "Madgascar" as that particular movie had some interesting personalities and conflicts between the main characters that was both delightful and interesting to observe - something not at all even remotely appearing in this series.
--dw817 (09-24-20)