Spooks (TV Series)

**Spooks** (also known as **Grim Life**) is an American adult animated Horror-comedy series for Adult Swim. The show is created by and written by Ralf Hat, and currently has 13 seasons, with ten episodes in each (130 episodes). *Spooks* features the violent, and terrifying adventures of Aaron Patterson, a young adult who was killed one day, and was recruited to be the apprentice of the Grim Reaper. Aaron, the Grim Reaper, along with the Angel, Michael spend their time, hunting demons, spirits, and other supernatural entities to save the world from "true Hell". Overall, the show parodies many horror films, stories, video games, or culture throughout. The series originally aired its first season on Spike in 2000, while season two and up aired on Adult Swim. In the United States, Spooks is rated TV-MA-LSV, and is unrated on all home releases.

## Overview

**Aaron Patterson** is a 22 year old man who lives in America's most haunted city, Dark Hallows. He is very nice and caring, even though bad things happen to him. His girlfriend dumps him, he gets fired, and basically everyone hates him except his brother who is more wealthier and socially better than him. One day however, Aaron is killed and sacrificed by a group of masked people, and awakens as a ghost. He escapes Limbo, and eventually meets the **Grim Reaper**, who recruited Aaron to become his own apprentice. In the episode **The Mountain**, we are introduced to a triagonist, **Michael** the Angel, who also plays an important role in the series.

### Seasons 1 - 4

The first four seasons focussed on the afterlife of Aaron, Grim, and Michael, as they hunt supernatural entities, and bring them back to Limbo, to serve their sentence. The three also have to face normal adult problems as well, throughout the series as a joke.

### Seasons 5 - 10

Seasons five to ten consisted of better animation, heavier gore and violence throughout.

## Characters

### Main Characters

* **Aaron**: A 23 year old paranoid man, who was killed by a cult of masked killers. He became a ghost, and currently works for the Grim Reaper, but tends to be very cowardly during his missions.
* **Grim Reaper**: The Grim Reaper, who's main goal is to collect souls of the dead, and hunt other supernatural forces. He is extremely rude to others, and barely cares about any harm he does.
* **Michael**: An intelligent, creative, and knowledgeable Archangel. He is the leader of the Angelic army, and is Aaron's best friend, roommate, and workmate.

### Secondary Characters

* **The Reap Residents**: Grim's human family, who are usually in the way of his missions.
	+ **Martin Reap**: Grim's 35 year old grandson, who is a very religious man. He is always optimistic, and ready to meet new people. He is however, very sex obsessed.
	+ **Elisabeth Reap**: Martin's 32 year old wife, who, like him, is very sex obsessed and religious. Other than that, she is a former member of a strange cult known as the Unseen.
	+ **Kevin Reap**: Martin and Elizabeth's 11 year old son, and G rim's annoying great grandson. He is adventurous and friendly, but gets in the nerves of Grim.
	+ **Maryland Reap**: The daughter of Martin and Elisabeth. She is a goth girl with a deep hatred toward her family and the world, unlike her family.
* **Onna**: A bloodthirsty succubus who lives with the Reap family. She is neutral, killing innocent and guilty civilians as she pleases. Kevin has somewhat of an attraction to her.
* **Anthony**: Aaron's cool, and drug obsessed wealthy younger brother, who is dead as well. He doesn't care however, and does the same stuff he always did when he was alive.
* **Seekers**: Demon like creature who guard over all of Limbo. They are more annoying, and playful then actual guards, but can often get violent.

### Minor/Recurring Characters

* **Dark Hallow Citizens**: The civilians of the town, Dark Hallows, Texas.
* **Max and Jake**: Kevin's school friends. Max is a quiet fat kid, while Jake is literally the opposite.
* **The Masked Cult**: A strange organization of Satanists who wears animal masks on. They killed Aaron, and many others in the series, and they are yet to remain annonomys, until the film.

## Production/Development

### Creation

Son of Hat was always a fan of horror films, scary legends, and creepypastas. He was a fan of violent, and gory ideas. He first came up with the idea of Spooks when he was only seven years old, and started drawing pictures of the main characters, and planned out a full plot, hoping to make a comic out of the idea.

Spooks as a comic series had a large popularity in Hat's school, but was unfortunately cancelled due to violent and gory content in his school grounds. Hat soon forgot about this idea, until later In his life, when he was urged to create a horror short film, which later aired on Spike Halloween of 1999.

### Writing

The planning for each episode begins with a table meeting of writers, who discuss the plot ideas as a group. A single staff writer reads and writes the script. Once the first draft of a script is finished, the writers and executive producers call in the actors to do a table read, to see if they are ok with it. After this script reading, the writers collaborate to rewrite the script as a group before eventually sending it to the animation team. At this point the voice recording is also started and the script is out of the writers' hands.

Son of Hat writes nearly all episodes, each containing crude jokes, gore, and terror. Every episode script is shown to the producers of Adult Swim only to see if the crew likes it, before animating it.

## Media

### Film

* *Main Article: Spooks: Blood & Water*

In Summer of 2013, at Comic-Con, Adult Swim opened its Spooks panel. Son of Hat announced there, that a film based on the series, intitled: *Spooks: Blood & Water*, has been midway through production. The film scheduled to be released in theaters on October 27, 2016, and became a box office success, gaining $312 million. The film follows the main characters on a mission to stop the fabled demon-war apocalypse known as the Hell Days, by traveling to Hell and searching for the legendary *Blood Stone*. The film is said to be the series finale of the show, until it has two more seasons left.

### Video Games

* *Main Article(s): Spooks (Video Game) and Spooks: The Fallen*