Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical premieres August 15, 2025 on Apple TV+

Apple TV+ has announced another new Peanuts special, Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, is coming to the subscription streaming service on Friday, August 15, 2025.   (The show was originally publicized as premiering July 18, but a couple of weeks before that date, Apple quietly delayed it by a month.)

Here's the press release from Apple:

Get ready to gather around the campfire with the Peanuts gang as Apple TV+ announces the all-new original Peanuts musical special, Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, premiering globally August 15, 2025. Featuring original music by Emmy Award-nominated composer Jeff Morrow and Emmy Award-nominated singer, songwriter, composer and New York Times bestselling author Ben Folds, the latest 40-minute special under the acclaimed “Snoopy Presents” banner by Peanuts and WildBrain for Apple TV+ marks the first Peanuts musical in 35 years.

This summer, celebrate the joy and magic of summer camp and the importance of preserving what you love. Charlie Brown loves camp and is determined to make his final year special, but Sally, a first-time camper, is nervous and skeptical of the new and unfamiliar place. While everyone settles into camp, Snoopy and Woodstock discover a treasure map that takes them on a wild adventure nearby.

One morning, the Peanuts gang learns that their beloved camp is shutting down because fewer campers are joining each summer. The news especially saddens Charlie Brown, who feels hopeless about losing a place that has meant so much to him and his friends. Meanwhile, on their adventure, Snoopy and Woodstock find the sought-after treasure chest, but are quickly disappointed when they discover it’s not riches, but instruments and photos from past summer concerts held at the camp. Newly inspired, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang use the treasure to host their own concert to save the camp.

A trailer was available briefly, but at the moment is no longer online.  The show will be 40 minutes long.

This isn't the first time Ben Folds has worked on a Peanuts special - he wrote a song and music for the 2022 show It's the Small Things, Charlie Brown; and Jeff Morrow has composed the music for most of the Apple TV+/WildBrain Peanuts shows.

(When Apple says this is "the first Peanuts musical in 35 years," presumably the previous one they're thinking of is the 1988 animated adaptation of Snoopy: The Musical.)

For more information about Apple TV+, including how to watch and subscribe, visit this AppleTV+ information page.

The sincerest form of flattery?

Not too long ago, a UK correspondent brought our attention to an obscure British newspaper strip titled Benny, because he felt it resembled Peanuts more than a little. He sent along a few examples, and he definitely had a point.

As it happens, those “few examples” were pretty much the only Benny strips readily available on the Web. That’s likely because the feature appeared in only one newspaper: London’s Daily Herald, from July 27, 1959, through October 14, 1961. Information about the strip’s creator — Derek Chittock, who hid behind the pseudonym “Droc” for Benny — also is rather thin.

Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive and newspapers.com, we were able to assemble all but a few dozen of the strip's entire run. Now armed with so many examples, it quickly became obvious that Benny was a deliberate attempt to mimic Charles Schulz’s popular strip. Unlike Peanuts, though, Benny appeared only Monday through Saturday; there were no Sunday strips ... undoubtedly because the Daily Herald didn't publish on Sundays.

Click on all images, for larger, easily readable versions.

But let’s begin with some background on Chittock.

He was born on February 21, 1922, and — after five years at London’s Slade School of Art — became an excellent artist and painter strongly in the Norman Rockwell tradition, as this magazine cover demonstrates. His work belonged in the Socialist Realism style, and he’s known to have exhibited at the Royal Academy and New English Art Club. He also was active with the Communist Party of Great Britain for roughly a decade — and was an art critic for its Daily Worker newspaper — until he resigned his membership following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Be that as it may, those leanings remained evident in Benny, which often was openly political during its entire run. Chittock died on his birthday, in 1986; he was 64.

You can learn a bit more about him at this Lambiek Comiclopedia entry.

In addition to the artistic style Chittock employed for Benny — which strongly evokes Schulz — the two strips share these traits:

• Both involve children who are wise beyond their years, and appear to be roughly the same age ... although the only time age is mentioned in a Benny strip, the character says that she’s 5, whereas the Peanuts characters are a few years older.

• Both strips have characters who often break the fourth wall, to address the reader directly.

• Both feature a blend of one-off gag strips and longer “serials” that run a week or more.

• Panel composition, word balloon use, and lettering style are very similar.

• Both occasionally name-check real-world events and individuals. Characters in Benny cite (among others) Austrian biologist Hans Haas, U.S. President Kennedy, jazz musician Johnny Dankworth, and orchestra conductor Malcolm Sargent.

• No adults appear in either strip.

• Both feature dog companions who “talk” — usually to the reader — via thought balloons. That said, the pooches in Benny are just-plain-dogs, and don’t have anything approaching Snoopy’s fantasy escapades.