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

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

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Along with letting nonsubscribers stream the old Charlie Brown holiday movies for free, Apple TV Plus throws a few originals in the mix.

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A picture of Charlie Brown holding a tiny Christmas tree.
A Charlie Brown Christmas streams free on Apple TV Plus for two days in December
Image: Apple

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 nonsubscribers 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:

  • It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: October 21st and October 22nd
  • A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving: November 18th to November 19th
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas: December 16th and December 17th
A picture of an animated frog and a toad in holiday sweaters, standing next to one another with their arms behind each other’s backs.
Frog and Toad will Frog and Toad it up in Frog and Toad.
Image: Apple

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.

A picture from Shape Island, showing three black shapes with eyes and knit caps on sitting on a yeti, which is laying on the snowy ground. He is very shaggy.
They definitely got me with the promise of a stop-motion yeti in Shape Island.
Image: Apple

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.