Inside Out spin-off Dream Productions is a bright, fun and energetic TV show

For a family movie designed for most ages, Inside Out has never been shy about how it cerebral it is – in fact, it takes almost entirely inside the head of a young girl named Riley.

It put forward complex concepts about emotions and interiority that challenge not just any kids in the audience but adults too. It can be confronting, forcing audiences to examine how comfortable or not comfortable they are with thorny emotions such as sadness and anxiety.

Dream Productions, a spin-off series that takes place somewhere between the first and second films, is less of a therapy session. It’s giving fans a break from all that introspection for something that is a little lighter but still underpinned by the emotional maturity we have come to expect.

This side project has its genesis in the first film when Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong visit the dream studio in an attempt to wake up Riley. There we found an entire Hollywood-esque studio is responsible for crafting the stories Riley experiences when she’s asleep.

Dream Productions expands on that concept over this four-episode series. At only 20 minutes each, it adds up a movie on the shorter side.

Paula Pell reprises her role as one of the directors of Riley’s dreams, but now she’s been given a name, Paula Persimmon.

Paula is a feted filmmaker responsible for many of the “hits” of Riley’s childhood. They tend to be dripping in rainbow-coloured sentimentalist, all pink cupcakes and unicorns.

Paula wants everything to stay as they were but Riley is getting older and her subconsciousness is processing daytime experiences that requires more than a balloon party. Paula is facing her own obsolescence but she’s in denial.

The studio head, Jean (Maya Rudolph), promotes Paula’s assistant director Janelle (Ally Maki) to a fully-fledged helmer and brings on board Xeni (Richard Ayoade, being very Richard Ayoade), a young filmmaker with big ambitions and an excellent storytelling instinct.

In Riley’s daytime life, she’s struggling with an upcoming dance, which will be her first, faced with the typical tween worries about what dress she’ll wear, if she should have a date, and whether she’ll embarrass herself.

This manifests in a conflict on the dream level between the artists and the executives – one just wants to make an “impact”, no matter what it does to Riley while Paula wants to get an outcome for Riley’s emotional state.

There are lots of jokes and references in Dream Productions that are clearly drawn from Pixar filmmakers’ real-world experiences inside a giant studio system.

The gags about the power struggle between the writers and the directors, the coffee obsession, what an assistant director actually does, the corporate doublespeak from suits are all very funny. But only if you get them.

It can tip towards “inside baseball” which surely many kids and probably a decent chunk of the adults won’t pick up. It’s made for people who have either spent some time on sets or have devoured showbusiness titles such as Babylon, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Get Shorty, Bojack Horseman and the rest. The list goes on.

In that sense, Dream Productions is also reminiscent of the recently released comedy series The Franchise, a satire about making superhero movies, but is less naval gazing.

Those details are the texture of the series but not the whole world. It is still centred on the relationship between our waking lives and our dreams, and how our emotional reactions can be influenced by our subconsciousness in ways we’ve never considered.

The story of Paula and the dream factory doesn’t necessarily connect to the show’s thematic foundation – it’s more in service of rather than in conversation with – but it’s a bright, fun and energetic package nonetheless.

Dream Productions is streaming on Disney+