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Tom and Jerry Special Shorts

Tom and Jerry Special Shorts is a 2021 American animated web series of two slapstick shorts based on the Tom and Jerry characters, produced by Warner Bros. Animation and released on HBO Max on February 20, 2021.1 The shorts were made by the team behind Looney Tunes Cartoons, launched without prior announcement as a tie-in to the live-action/animated Tom & Jerry film released the following week, and were later removed from the service, leaving them without an official streaming home.2 • 1

Key factDetail
PremiereFebruary 20, 2021, on HBO Max; both episodes aired the same day1
Episodes"On a Roll" and "The House That Cat Built", one season of two shorts3
Running time4 to 5 minutes per short1
DeveloperPeter Browngardt, creator of Looney Tunes Cartoons; produced by Warner Bros. Animation with Turner Entertainment1
VoicesWilliam Hanna (archive recordings, uncredited) and Andrew Dickman as Tom and Jerry; Keone Young as the sushi chef1
RatingTV-PG; IMDb user rating 7.9/10 from about 166 votes3 • 4
AvailabilityRemoved from HBO Max in March 2021, restored in July 2021, removed again in August 2022; not released on physical media or VOD1

Spoilers

Episodes

Both shorts premiered on February 20, 2021.3

  1. "On a Roll" (S01E01). After spotting Jerry racing about the eatery, the sushi chef instructs Tom that he must justify his presence there by nabbing the mouse who has been taking sushi.3 On IMDb the episode holds a 7.8/10 rating from 44 votes.5
  2. "The House That Cat Built" (S01E02). When Jerry invades Tom's new extra-deluxe, extra-large cat castle, Tom is determined to get Jerry out.3 Its IMDb rating is 7.5/10 from 41 votes.5

Place in the franchise

The two shorts count among the 166 Tom and Jerry shorts produced between 1940 and 2021, in this case as the two HBO Max special shorts in a list otherwise dominated by 162 theatrical shorts.10 In franchise listings they sit between The Tom and Jerry Show (2014–2021) and Tom and Jerry in New York (2021), and they were the first Tom and Jerry series in the United States to premiere on a streaming service rather than on channels such as Cartoon Network or Boomerang.11 • 1 At 4 to 5 minutes per short, they are also shorter than the 7-to-11-minute format of earlier Tom and Jerry television series.1

Production

The series was developed by Peter Browngardt, the animator behind Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, Uncle Grandpa, and Looney Tunes Cartoons, and produced by Warner Bros. Animation with Turner Entertainment.1 • 6 Writer Andrew Dickman said the crew developed the shorts during downtime while working on Looney Tunes Cartoons, and the show shares that series' animation style.1 Kenny Pittenger and David Gemmill directed, with writing credits shared among Andrew Dickman, David Gemmill, Michael Ruocco, Kenny Pittenger, Johnny Ryan, Jacob Fleisher, and Ryan Khatam; Joshua Moshier and Carl Johnson composed the music, with the theme drawn from Scott Bradley's classic Tom and Jerry scores.7 • 1

The shorts deliberately echo the 1940s MGM theatrical cartoons. Tom and Jerry's designs are based on their mid-1940s appearances rather than the late-1940s/early-1950s looks used in most post-1986 television series, and the title card recalls the one first used on the original prints of The Midnight Snack (1941).1 The voice track combines archived, uncredited recordings of William Hanna, who performed the characters' vocal effects in the original shorts, with new uncredited work by Andrew Dickman.1 Databases disagree on the speaking cast: TVmaze and Next Episode credit Jeff Bennett as Tom and Frank Welker as Jerry, while IMDb's full credits list Dave Zink as Tom (speaking) and Mick Cipes as Jerry (speaking) for one episode each.8 • 7

Release and removal

HBO Max dropped the two shorts on February 20, 2021, six days before the Tom & Jerry film reached theaters and the service on February 26, 2021, and WarnerMedia issued no statement about the release.2 They were the only Tom and Jerry episodes to air before that film's release.1

Removal. About one month after debut the shorts vanished from HBO Max; the Max fan wiki records the removal date as March 29, 2021.1 • 9 They returned in July 2021, no longer as a standalone program but as two extras on the page for the Tom & Jerry film.1 In August 2022, during the content removals that followed David Zaslav's becoming head of Warner Bros. Discovery, the shorts were taken off HBO Max again and have not returned.1 They are not available on physical media or video on demand, and the Tom and Jerry Wiki categorizes the series as lost media.1

Reception

The series received mostly positive reviews and drew favorable fan response, with commenters describing the shorts as among the strongest modern Tom and Jerry productions.1 Aggregated audience scores are modest in volume: IMDb reports 7.9/10 from about 166 votes, and the MyShows user rating averages about 4.3 out of 5, with "On a Roll" (4.48) rated slightly above "The House That Cat Built" (4.26).4 • 12 Rotten Tomatoes lists no critic reviews for the season, so no Tomatometer score exists.3

References

  1. Tom and Jerry Special Shorts, Tom and Jerry Wiki (Fandom)
  2. New 'Tom and Jerry' Shorts Are Streaming on HBO Max, Rotoscopers (February 21, 2021)
  3. Tom and Jerry Special Shorts: Season 1, Rotten Tomatoes
  4. Tom and Jerry Special Shorts (TV Mini Series 2021) – Ratings, IMDb
  5. Tom and Jerry Special Shorts (TV Mini Series 2021) – Episode list, IMDb
  6. Peter Browngardt biography compilation
  7. Tom and Jerry Special Shorts – Full cast & crew, IMDb
  8. Tom and Jerry Special Shorts, TVmaze
  9. Tom and Jerry Special Shorts, HBO Max Wiki (Fandom)
  10. Tom And Jerry Movie List Download (list of 166 shorts, 1940–2021)
  11. List of Tom and Jerry television series, Tom and Jerry Wiki (Fandom)
  12. Рейтинг сезонов и серий Том и Джерри: специальные короткометражки, MyShows.me

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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