This is the story of a family that makes tv show with puppets, and one human host, called Mr. Pickles, (played by Jim Carrey), that tries to appeal to kid's kinder side. Trying to pass them the values of being a good person.
The controlling father is the director of the show. The son is the host. The daughter is the the puppet maker of the show, and one of the puppet handlers.
The host's wife is separating from him because, in the past, a faulty stoplight has caused an accident with another car that has killed one of their 2 twin sons. Since the host is such a good person, he accepts the death and is not filled with rage. The sepparating wife is filled with rage, and can't accept the death, and doesn't like to feel like she's a bad person in comparison to the host, so she finds another person.
The host's other son doesn't give that much attention to his father's words of the value of being good.
The host wants to insert into the show more messages to the kids about death and accepting death, and depression, and exposing the hipocrisies of the world, etc.
The father doesn't accept this, and thinks his son is close to a break down, but cares more about the future of the show, than his son's mental wellbeing, so he plans to create a puppet of the host/ mr. Pickles, and make a mr. Pickles on ice show, so that when he does mentally break down, he will have a replacement (another human dressed as mr. pickles).
The puppet is made by his sister.
With increasing stress to the host (dead son, bad son, sepparating wife, betraying father and sister), he becomes more and more unhinged. There's much more to the story, but I think this is enough for you to decide if this is for you. There's very little humor, except for some subtle dark humor when exposing the dark facets of human"kind". It's smartly written and directed.
Particularly I think this series is very relevant in the face of the rise of the prominent narcisissistic psychopathic compulsive liars of this day and age, wether they be politicians, rap singers, people with no talents that are rich and expose themselves on reality tv, people who scare children on youtube to get revenue, people who generate drama on social media to appear relevant, etc.
It's as if the host is the last person with moral values in the world, trying to bring light to the darkness, but the darkness is much too strong and is closing in on him.