New Non-Kids Animated Sitcom! - TV Programmes

spaintv · 25-10-2004, 17:52

This sounds like a great new animated adult sitcom. It premieres on Wednesday 27th Ocotber on Comedy Central in the USA.

Cartoon Characters Are 'Drawn' into Reality Living

What if Superman, Porky Pig, the Little Mermaid, Betty Boop and SpongeBob SquarePants lived together "Big Brother"-style?
Nearly everything else has been tried in reality television, so the cartoon world gets its shot in "Drawn Together," a riotously adult Comedy Central series premiering Wednesday, Oct. 27. Cleverly merging several classic animation styles, the show even features "The Real World"-type confessionals as familiar types struggle to coexist under one roof. It proves no easier for cartoon characters than it is for humans.

Among those sharing quarters and personal revelations: Captain Hero, a square-jawed crusader for justice; Spanky Ham, a loose-lipped pig (literally); naive Princess Clara, who's awakened to the outside world by streetwise housemate Foxxy Love, the victim of a pixillated "wardrobe malfunction" in the premiere episode; Toot Braunstein, a Roaring Twenties flapper who exists in black-and-white while the others are in color; and Wooldoor-Sockbat, a "SpongeBob"-like creature.

The fact that "Drawn Together" isn't kids' stuff is fortified by the lyrics of the songs the "stars" frequently break into. "We just love reality television," series co-creator Matt Silverstein explains. "And we love animation," adds his creative partner, fellow "Crank Yankers" veteran Dave Jeser. "Since we don't have really original ideas, we just put those two together. In animation, you can do anything, and that's what we're trying to do."
The "cast" of "Drawn Together" evokes already copyrighted cartoon characters so closely, "The lawyers really looked long and hard at the actual design of the characters," Jeser reports. "As long as it was an original design, which they all are, we were told that's OK. Sometimes, we have other characters from other shows in the hot tub or at a party ... but we're going to blur out their faces, because they didn't sign a release."

Silverstein isn't sure that will satisfy other animation houses, though. "We're going to get sued," he predicts. "Everybody likes to sue people."

Source: Zap2it.com

spaintv · 29-10-2004, 16:36

More on this new show:

Real-world roasting
Animated characters take apart the reality genre in 'Drawn Together'

Ouch! As if Comedy Central's satire weren't incendiary enough with "South Park" and "Chappelle's Show," here comes the adult animated lampoon "Drawn Together" to singe any skin that might have previously escaped unscathed.

Who gets burned here? The reality show genre, for one, and the cartoon world, for another. Video games, the Internet, anime, animated Disney musicals, racial stereotypes - and that's only in the setup of the show and this week's first of eight episodes.

"Drawn Together" is drawn sharply but, dare we say, affectionately (sort of) in skewering reality shows with their own indomitable cliches. Housed collectively here are eight representative cartoon characters created with an eye toward diversity and an ear toward conflict. There's the creamy-white fairy-tale princess, who's also a cheerily naive racist. The bossy black mystery-solving chick, scantily attired, of course. The dim superhero with deltoids. The video-game hottie. The rude and crude Internet animal. The incomprehensible anime monster. The cutesy Saturday morning whatchamacallit. And the black-and-white flapper babe.

Faithful exponents of their separate animated genres, the superhero bursts through walls, the flapper's eyes bulge, and the anime troll explodes through whizzing graphics after its magical transformation. Their songs are nailed, too. As the princess trills in wonderment for her lush orchestral ballad, "It's really quite thrilling/I think I taste a filling."

That's because she's engaged in a girl-kiss with the black chick in the hot tub, making up after their first-day girl-fight. "I thought those people picked banjos," shrugs the princess, "not fights." As for her loose-cannon combatant, "Foxxy may be loose," the bodacious chick expounds in the third person, "but she ain't no cannon." Sorry, this being a reality show, she is, too.

The gang has so many stages to go through. The arrival at the house. The party. The hot tub. The "confessionals." The freak-outs. The name-calling. The bleeped words and blurred gestures. The complaining phone call to the producers. ("I don't know if a tequila brunch would help.") The booze-soaked bash. The lies, the unlikely alliances, the climactic vote.

And the crises. It's not giving up too much to say that one attention-craving character gets into cutting. Our Internet pig's inappropriate behavior almost instantly reaches the super-gross stage. There are even injuries. But being cartoon characters, the bloodied bounce right back for more.

We shouldn't be surprised at how easily the live-action attitudes and cartoon depictions mesh here, considering the show's pedigree. "Drawn Together's" creators Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser come off such might-as-well-be- animated human cast comedies as "3rd Rock From the Sun," "Greg the Bunny," "The Man Show" and "Andy Richter Controls the Universe." Those shows were forever flinging themselves into flights of fancy, evoking the essence of real-world situations by subverting accepted norms and logic. Their nonsense made more perfect sense than a straight-on portrayal.

Which will make it hard to watch any reality live-in with a straight face again after the "Drawn Together" assault. We're too hip to the tricks - much the same way that sitcoms could no longer perpetrate the Very Special Episode once that sentimental slog bloated into its own parody.

Consider this Comedy Central spoof the tipping point. The networks' fall reality series are already finding hard sledding in the Nielsens. "The Benefactor" tanked, "Last Comic Standing" collapsed, "The Bachelor" is being jilted by viewers. Does this mean reality is on its last legs? No way. But there's definitely a settling out, where the strong survive ("Survivor," the original and still the best) while the me-toos sink. If the genre is meant to endure, its slapdash ubiquity will yield to fewer but more carefully crafted productions. Any as clever as "Drawn Together" would definitely deserve to win immunity.

DRAWN TOGETHER. Various cartoon archetypes share a mansion in this rude and raunchy reality-show sendup, a perfect match for the smart mockery of "South Park" (which starts new episodes tonight at 10). Adult series premieres tonight at 10:30 on Comedy Central.

Source: newsday.com

remlap · 29-10-2004, 20:46

The show is awesome simply awesome, very funny show.

Cjw · 29-10-2004, 21:16

I have seen clips of it via email....looks very funny

Hope channel 4 buys it up

Tenacious G · 30-10-2004, 00:49

I watched the first episode, and I thought it was trash. It was all very predictably lame. It's the kind of thing that could have been funny, but they missed by a mile. Maybe it will improve, but the first episode gets a massive thumbs-down from me.

25-10-2004, 17:52	#1
spaintv Forum Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Gibraltar (UK Territory) EU Services: UK / Spain / Gibraltar / SKY Posts: 1,843	New Non-Kids Animated Sitcom! This sounds like a great new animated adult sitcom. It premieres on Wednesday 27th Ocotber on Comedy Central in the USA. Cartoon Characters Are 'Drawn' into Reality Living What if Superman, Porky Pig, the Little Mermaid, Betty Boop and SpongeBob SquarePants lived together "Big Brother"-style? Nearly everything else has been tried in reality television, so the cartoon world gets its shot in "Drawn Together," a riotously adult Comedy Central series premiering Wednesday, Oct. 27. Cleverly merging several classic animation styles, the show even features "The Real World"-type confessionals as familiar types struggle to coexist under one roof. It proves no easier for cartoon characters than it is for humans. Among those sharing quarters and personal revelations: Captain Hero, a square-jawed crusader for justice; Spanky Ham, a loose-lipped pig (literally); naive Princess Clara, who's awakened to the outside world by streetwise housemate Foxxy Love, the victim of a pixillated "wardrobe malfunction" in the premiere episode; Toot Braunstein, a Roaring Twenties flapper who exists in black-and-white while the others are in color; and Wooldoor-Sockbat, a "SpongeBob"-like creature. The fact that "Drawn Together" isn't kids' stuff is fortified by the lyrics of the songs the "stars" frequently break into. "We just love reality television," series co-creator Matt Silverstein explains. "And we love animation," adds his creative partner, fellow "Crank Yankers" veteran Dave Jeser. "Since we don't have really original ideas, we just put those two together. In animation, you can do anything, and that's what we're trying to do." The "cast" of "Drawn Together" evokes already copyrighted cartoon characters so closely, "The lawyers really looked long and hard at the actual design of the characters," Jeser reports. "As long as it was an original design, which they all are, we were told that's OK. Sometimes, we have other characters from other shows in the hot tub or at a party ... but we're going to blur out their faces, because they didn't sign a release." Silverstein isn't sure that will satisfy other animation houses, though. "We're going to get sued," he predicts. "Everybody likes to sue people." Source: Zap2it.com

29-10-2004, 16:36	#2
spaintv Forum Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Gibraltar (UK Territory) EU Services: UK / Spain / Gibraltar / SKY Posts: 1,843	More on this new show: Real-world roasting Animated characters take apart the reality genre in 'Drawn Together' Ouch! As if Comedy Central's satire weren't incendiary enough with "South Park" and "Chappelle's Show," here comes the adult animated lampoon "Drawn Together" to singe any skin that might have previously escaped unscathed. Who gets burned here? The reality show genre, for one, and the cartoon world, for another. Video games, the Internet, anime, animated Disney musicals, racial stereotypes - and that's only in the setup of the show and this week's first of eight episodes. "Drawn Together" is drawn sharply but, dare we say, affectionately (sort of) in skewering reality shows with their own indomitable cliches. Housed collectively here are eight representative cartoon characters created with an eye toward diversity and an ear toward conflict. There's the creamy-white fairy-tale princess, who's also a cheerily naive racist. The bossy black mystery-solving chick, scantily attired, of course. The dim superhero with deltoids. The video-game hottie. The rude and crude Internet animal. The incomprehensible anime monster. The cutesy Saturday morning whatchamacallit. And the black-and-white flapper babe. Faithful exponents of their separate animated genres, the superhero bursts through walls, the flapper's eyes bulge, and the anime troll explodes through whizzing graphics after its magical transformation. Their songs are nailed, too. As the princess trills in wonderment for her lush orchestral ballad, "It's really quite thrilling/I think I taste a filling." That's because she's engaged in a girl-kiss with the black chick in the hot tub, making up after their first-day girl-fight. "I thought those people picked banjos," shrugs the princess, "not fights." As for her loose-cannon combatant, "Foxxy may be loose," the bodacious chick expounds in the third person, "but she ain't no cannon." Sorry, this being a reality show, she is, too. The gang has so many stages to go through. The arrival at the house. The party. The hot tub. The "confessionals." The freak-outs. The name-calling. The bleeped words and blurred gestures. The complaining phone call to the producers. ("I don't know if a tequila brunch would help.") The booze-soaked bash. The lies, the unlikely alliances, the climactic vote. And the crises. It's not giving up too much to say that one attention-craving character gets into cutting. Our Internet pig's inappropriate behavior almost instantly reaches the super-gross stage. There are even injuries. But being cartoon characters, the bloodied bounce right back for more. We shouldn't be surprised at how easily the live-action attitudes and cartoon depictions mesh here, considering the show's pedigree. "Drawn Together's" creators Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser come off such might-as-well-be- animated human cast comedies as "3rd Rock From the Sun," "Greg the Bunny," "The Man Show" and "Andy Richter Controls the Universe." Those shows were forever flinging themselves into flights of fancy, evoking the essence of real-world situations by subverting accepted norms and logic. Their nonsense made more perfect sense than a straight-on portrayal. Which will make it hard to watch any reality live-in with a straight face again after the "Drawn Together" assault. We're too hip to the tricks - much the same way that sitcoms could no longer perpetrate the Very Special Episode once that sentimental slog bloated into its own parody. Consider this Comedy Central spoof the tipping point. The networks' fall reality series are already finding hard sledding in the Nielsens. "The Benefactor" tanked, "Last Comic Standing" collapsed, "The Bachelor" is being jilted by viewers. Does this mean reality is on its last legs? No way. But there's definitely a settling out, where the strong survive ("Survivor," the original and still the best) while the me-toos sink. If the genre is meant to endure, its slapdash ubiquity will yield to fewer but more carefully crafted productions. Any as clever as "Drawn Together" would definitely deserve to win immunity. DRAWN TOGETHER. Various cartoon archetypes share a mansion in this rude and raunchy reality-show sendup, a perfect match for the smart mockery of "South Park" (which starts new episodes tonight at 10). Adult series premieres tonight at 10:30 on Comedy Central. Source: newsday.com

29-10-2004, 20:46	#3
remlap Forum Member Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: SOUTH WALES! Services: SKY HD Technomate 1500CI+ Humax HDCI2000 NOVA DVBS2 on 105cm Motorised Dish Posts: 5,256	The show is awesome simply awesome, very funny show.

29-10-2004, 21:16	#4
Cjw Forum Member Join Date: May 2003 Location: Buckinghamshire Services: Freeview+, iMac, Windows Vista PC, iPhone, too many plastic guitars Posts: 2,021	I have seen clips of it via email....looks very funny Hope channel 4 buys it up

30-10-2004, 00:49	#5
Tenacious G Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 3,303	I watched the first episode, and I thought it was trash. It was all very predictably lame. It's the kind of thing that could have been funny, but they missed by a mile. Maybe it will improve, but the first episode gets a massive thumbs-down from me.