Riding the coattails of the biggest animated film ever is no mean feat. And Dream Productions, a four-episode narrative series of 20-minute-ish episodes, feels like one of Pixar’s most ambitious small-screen efforts yet. Their TV spin-offs tend to be tiny animated snacks, often no more than 5 minutes at a time; this feels like a full meal, with a runtime that adds up to a full movie. Set between the two _Inside Out_films, you could almost think of it as Inside Out 2.5.

Happily, it’s also an absolute treat, expanding the psychologically rich and comedically fertile setting of a pre-teen’s brain in deeply satisfying ways. Dreams as a concept have already been briefly explored in the two Inside Out films, beginning with Pete Docter’s superlative 2015 smash and continued with Kelsey Mann’s solid sequel: a means of delving into unprocessed memories, the dreams themselves staged as if giant movie productions,...