‘Hello Jack’ Returns To Apple TV+ For A Second Season Full Of Kindness

Hello, Jack! The Kindness Show comes back for a second season on Apple TV+ on Friday. The children’s show stars Jack McBrayer and follows the titular Jack and his friends in the town of Clover Grove as they spread acts of kindness through good deeds, creativity and imagination.

Hello, Jack! The Kindness Show is co-created and executive produced by McBrayer and Angela C. Santomero. The series is produced by Story Media Group and features animation by Brown Bag Films. Jax Media also produces.

“For season two, we’re able to continue on these wonderful stories with these great messages for preschoolers about compassion, about kindness. “ McBrayer says of the new season. “We have some fun-themed episodes that I think our viewers will enjoy. We have a lot of great guest stars coming in season two, which I’m really excited about myself.”

Kindness has always been at the heart of the show. “We use kindness as an umbrella. [We use it to] explore all sorts of different social-emotional lessons.” McBrayer continues, “I wanted to let younger viewers know how easy, how accessible acts of kindness can be, and quite frankly, how fun they can be. And hopefully see that grow and we just create a world of kinder adults.”

McBrayer might not have been the natural choice to do an earnest children’s show. Adult viewers may recognize McBrayer as a comedian and actor on such shows as 30 Rock. Early on he had to convince the studio that this was not a satirical show, but rather one that is deeply earnest.

McBrayer has a clear vision and one that was fairly unique for modern children’s programs. Part of that was being live-action. “I wanted to do live-action because I didn’t see a great deal of that. And the things that we did see weren’t necessarily focusing on the social-emotional lessons that I wanted to communicate with a show like this,” he explains. “For me, the most important thing was the social-emotional lessons. One thing that I really pulled from shows like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was to see a grown human being talking to me, the home viewer directly through the TV about these things, about feelings of being scared and the difference between being alone versus being lonely. It felt real because it was coming from a real human being.”

While season two is a natural continuation of the show, it gave the cast, and McBrayer, a renewed sense of purpose as well as more confidence. “As the episodes progressed, we all got more comfortable with the rhythm and even the schedule. We got more comfortable with each other and with what the show was gonna look like,” McBrayer says. “With that, came a renewed sense of confidence that felt good for me. In hindsight, I think it was naturally gonna happen, but I’m so grateful that it happened. It just made my job easier, but also it really was just a joy to go to work every single day with that great group of people with these messages that I truly believe in.”

A new sense of confidence was important for McBrayer. “I have to admit for season two, I have a sense of confidence that I don’t think I had for season one, just because we didn’t know. I knew what I wanted to try to communicate, but now that I’ve seen it and we have received a very warm response, I wanna keep doing this.” He says, “I am energized by this. It makes me feel good to do it. I sleep very well at night. This has been a very positive experience all around. I just wanna keep doing it for a long, long time.”