Apple TV Plus will stream free Charlie Brown classics for the holidays again

Apple nabbed exclusive rights to stream the Peanuts holiday specials on Apple TV Plus back in 2020, and has made a habit of making the stream freely available to non-subscribers for short periods around Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas ever since. The company announced yesterday that it’s doing it again this year, along with subscriber only originals like The Velveteen Rabbit, Frog and Toad, and a new Shape Island special.

Assuming Apple doesn’t announce a new broadcast partnership, this will be the second year the three Peanuts specials — It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and A Charlie Brown Christmas — will be wholly exclusive to Apple TV Plus in the US. They were shown on PBS in 2020 and 2021, following complaints from fans who’d made watching the specials’ broadcasts part of their holiday traditions for decades. Here are the dates nonsubscribers can stream the specials for free:

Apple TV Plus will debut a Christmas episode of Frog and Toad, an Apple TV Plus series based on the Arnold Lobel series of the same name, on December 1st. Nat Faxon and Kevin Michael Richardson star as Frog and Toad, respectively. And if the picture above of a frog and a toad in adorable seasonal turtlenecks doesn’t get you interested, you should know that the rest of the voice cast includes Ron Funches, John Hodgman, Tom Kenny, Margaret Cho, and Stephen Tobolowsky.

Besides those, Apple TV Plus will have a 40-minute live-action treatment of The Velveteen Rabbit, along with holiday-themed episodes of the stop-motion Shape Island, The Snoopy Show, and Sago Mini Friends.