At Cartoon Forum next week, 75 creative teams from around Europe will gather in Toulouse to pitch their animated TV projects, in hopes of connecting with potential buyers, co-producers and other partners. And we’ve been featuring a different series or special each day this week that we believe deserves a closer look. (You can also catch up on the ones we’ve already covered—This Moose Belongs to Me, Sam & Watson and The Underglow.)

Teaching kids about death can be a challenge. But Mort and Millie are here to help.

Poland’s GS Animation is co-producing this 2D-animated series (52 x seven minutes) with Flickerpix in the UK and Toronto-based Sphere Media. Geared toward upper preschoolers, Mort & Millie explains death to kids by framing it as a natural part of life, “using clear language, modelling what helps kids process emotions, and showing adorable characters that help someone just because they can,” says Sphere Media’s VP of content and development Andrea Griffith. 

At the heart of this unique premise are a friendly grim sweeper (a grim reaper with a broom, of course) and a millipede, who work together to help various creatures make their final wishes come true, delivering scientific facts along the way. Maybe a jellyfish wants to ride an ocean current one last time, for example. Or a slime mold yearns to experience the feeling of flying again.

The show’s leading duo Mort and Millie are a soft-hearted Grim Reaper and a millipede who always tells it like it is, says Griffith.

Writer/animator Taylor Annisette (Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, The Snoopy Show) came up with this series concept while thinking about the term “micromort”—a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death. This spark of an idea was then ignited by a personal experience. “Taylor vividly remembers that when she lost her grandfather at a young age, her parents had trouble communicating what death was to her because they were struggling with their own grief,” Griffith shares.

Loss is a natural part of everyone’s life, so Mort and Millie comes with a built-in universal (and bold) touchpoint that could help it appeal to kids everywhere. And having multiple international studios steering the development should also help ensure that it appeals to kids around the globe. All three studios have also got an educational consultant and a death and grief consultant on contract.

Griffith hopes the show will add levity and beauty to what many consider a dark subject. “Kids have questions, and we can do a much better job of opening up dialogue around life and death.”

Mort and Millie has a budget of US$5.9 million, and the team is looking for commissioning broadcasters and streamers. Annisette will join GS Animation, Sphere Media and Flickerpix to pitch the project on Wednesday, September 17 at 10:45 a.m. (local time) in the Pink Room.