When a young girl named Hailey is kidnapped by a disturbed man dressed as Santa Claus, Hailey's imaginary friend Happy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) goes for help: finding as her saviour a drunken ex-police detective turned professional killer Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni).
Based on a comic miniseries by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson, Happy! is an absurd - and absurdly violent combination of grimy crime thriller and black comedy. Violence abounds, and over-the-top jokes and pratfalls sit uneasily alongside grotesque moments of horror. The episode works surprisingly well in fits and starts, but also makes several awkward missteps. It gets there in the end, but I suspect it will lose a fair proportion of viewers on the way.
