Thursday 1 September 1988

Count Duckula

Count Duckula - September 1988 to February 1993

Count Duckula is a British children's animated comedy-drama horror television series created by British studio Cosgrove Hall as a spin-off from Danger Mouse, a series in which the Count Duckula character was a recurring villain. Count Duckula premiered for three series from 6 September 1988 to 16 February 1993, and was produced by Thames Television for 58 episodes and Central Televisionfor the final seven episodes. In all, 65 episodes were made, each about 22 minutes long. All 65 episodes have been released on DVD in the U.K., while only the first series has been released in North America.
The show is a loose parody of the story of Count Dracula. Set in Transylvania (a region in Romania), Duckula lives in a spooky castle known as Castle Duckula alongside his butler Igor and his large nanny (who is always referred to as "Nanny" and perpetually wears an arm sling). Almost all of the characters in the show are anthropomorphised birds.


Garfield and Friends

Garfield and Friends - September 1988 to December 1994

Based on the highly popular comic strip by Jim Davis, Garfield and Friends was considered the best long-running cartoon on CBS. This Saturday morning series featured the adventures of that lovable, hungry fat cat Garfield, his yellow dog friend Odie, and their cartoonist bachelor master Jon Arbuckle.

Garfield cartoons shared the spot with a new cartoon series created for this series called U.S. Acres (also based on a comic strip by Jim Davis). U.S. Acres was a cartoon about a group of barnyard animals who run a farm. The leader was Orson Pig, the bookish and perceptive pig. His friends had many different qualities: Wade Duck was the scaredy-cat duck who runs away from everything, no kidding; Booker was a crafty little chick whose main goal was to chase a worm, and his brother Sheldon was nothing more than an egg with two legs sticking out; Roy Rooster was the practical joking rooster who puts everyone in trouble with his jokes; and two sheep, Bo and Lanolin, were always bickering with each other about nearly everything. Bo being a nice guy and Lanolin a cruel girl. Each episode, they had to protect the farm from Orson's big bad brothers and a crafty weasel. Before this series, Garfield cartoons were shown as yearly specials on CBS, and the specials were so great that CBS decided to turn Garfield into a cartoon series. In the first season, each 30-minute episode was packed with three 8-minute shorts, two Garfield shorts and one U.S. Acres short.





Monday 1 February 1988

Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf - 1988 till 2012

Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises ten series (including a ninth mini-series named Back To Earth) of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1993 and from 1997 to 1999, and on Dave in 2009 and 2012, gaining a cult following. The series was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. In addition to the television episodes, there are four novels, two pilot episodes for an American version of the show, a radio version produced for BBC Radio 7, tie-in books, magazines and other merchandise.
Despite the pastiche of science fiction used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character-driven comedy, with off-the-wall, often scatological science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices. In the early episodes, a recurring source of comedy was the "Odd Couple"-style relationship between the two central characters of the show, who have an intense dislike for each other and are trapped together deep in space. The main characters are Dave Lister, the last known human alive, and Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of Lister's dead bunkmate. The other regular characters are Cat, a lifeform which evolved from the descendants of Lister's pregnant pet cat Frankenstein; HollyRed Dwarf's computer; Kryten, a service mechanoid; and, as of Series VII to Back to Earth, Kristine Kochanski, an alternative-reality version of Lister's long-lost love.


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