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Nope, drawing comic strips isn’t a bunch of peanuts – although loyal readers would know the comic strip that goes by that name/title (much to the annoyance of Charles Schulz, the original writer, creator himself).

From the outset, I knew I was going to enjoy this documentary because who doesn’t like a dose of Snoopy, the beagle pet dog related to its owner, Charlie Brown?

For a long time, I’d read, analyse, laugh along and enjoy Charles Schulz’ work that would be part of the comics section in one of the English language dailies in Malaysia. His work made the bulk of my childhood…until it was obvious that the hard copy newspaper became less and less popular the older I got, with its increasing ka-ching… so I followed along with that trend and with that had much less access to his comics, but had found other ways to embrace Snoopy and Co. through different means… including T-shirts and figurines. Anyhow, you can probably tell how much I loved and still love Schulz’ work and the characters he had in mind.

Charlie Brown, perhaps Charles Schulz’s alter ego, often makes fun of his dog and its capabilities in a cute and cheeky way: “Ah, you only do this, do that the whole day, you won’t be able to help me with my human tasks (oh, my 500-word essay)”.

The iconic comic strip became a global phenomenon, unexpected by the original creator himself “Sparky” – that’s the nickname of Charles Schulz, who obviously failed over and over to get his comic strips published previously – until he had a lightbulb moment.

Narrated by Lupita Nyong’o, the Academy Award Winner offers a delightful account on Charles Schulz’ life alongside the animated characters Schulz had created, including the brief scene on Lucy for psychiatric help.

The highlight of this documentary has to be the interviews conducted with Schulz’ widow, the American actress Drew Barrymore, American film director Paul Feig and Miyako Cech, the Tokyo-born American actress. I liked how they were snippets inserted into the film, yet never distracting from the main point of the 54-minute piece.

Schulz only stopped drawing once he realised that his cancer diagnosis became too much to handle.

And for those of you who knew what happened next, it’s of course, an ending that nobody liked. But, like everything else, every story has a beginning, middle, and end. The good thing is there are many other documentaries related to Schulz’ work you can watch – because Schulz has become that influential.

One thing is for sure - you’ll look at comic strips in a different light, after catching this on Apple TV+, thanks to Apple Original Films.