Category Archives: Animation on TV

Rick and Morty’s Justin Roiland cleared of domestic violence charges

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Roiland says he ‘never had any doubt that this day would come’ after authorities say there was ‘insufficient evidence’

Felony domestic violence charges against Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland have been dismissed, two months after he was dropped from the show.

Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for the Orange County district attorney’s office, confirmed the development in a statement on Wednesday, saying: “We dismissed the charges today as a result of having insufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

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Wallace and Gromit maker warns UK animators may have to move abroad

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Exclusive: head of Aardman studio blames Brexit as UK falls behind on skills and tax relief

The head of Aardman, the Oscar-winning British studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, has warned that the nation’s animation productions for children’s television will have to be made overseas because acute challenges are taking their toll on the UK sector.

Sean Clarke, Aardman’s managing director, said the company is struggling with everything from serious competition from other countries on tax relief to a dire skills shortage.

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Justin Roiland dropped from two more TV shows after domestic abuse charges

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Roiland, who has pleaded not guilty, will no longer work on Hulu shows Solar Opposites or Koala Man, as well as being dropped from Rick and Morty

Justin Roiland has been dropped from two more animated shows, Solar Opposites and Koala Man, after being charged with felony domestic violence against a former girlfriend, a day after he was dropped from hit series Rick and Morty.

US network Hulu announced on Wednesday that it had “ended our association with Justin Roiland”, a day after Rick and Morty distributor Adult Swim released a similar statement saying he would no longer voice the titular characters or work as showrunnner.

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Pat Carroll, voice of Disney villain Ursula in The Little Mermaid, dies aged 95

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The comedy actor, who started out as a regular on variety shows and became a prolific voice actor, died at home on Saturday of pneumonia

Pat Carroll, the Emmy award-winning actor and voice of the memorable Disney villain Ursula in The Little Mermaid, has died aged 95.

Carroll died on Saturday of pneumonia at her home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, her daughter Kerry Karsian told the Hollywood Reporter.

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Charlie Brooker: ‘Mr Dystopia? That makes me sound like a wrestler’

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As he releases the latest fruits of his new megabucks deal with Netflix – an interactive cartoon about a cat – the Black Mirror creator discusses gaming, nuclear war, and why his generation has wrecked the UK

Charlie Brooker is sitting at a desk, a big cardboard box in the background, miscellany spilling out of bookshelves. “What you can’t see,” he says, since we’re on Zoom, “is all the shit all over my desk. I’m shambolic.”

He got his first gig doing a comic strip when he was 15, for 80 quid a week; he dropped out of Westminster University as the only dissertation he wanted to write was on video games, and scrambled into a career in journalism – “there was no planning, I wasn’t somebody who was out hustling” – via working in a shop and writing video game reviews. He shifted, via Screenwipe, Gameswipe, Newswipe and Weekly Wipe, into screenwriting, and achieved astonishing success with the anthology series Black Mirror. His production company with Annabel Jones, Broke and Bones, has just been bought by Netflix for an unspecified sum; the rumour is that it’s so enormous that, well, I had to get out a calculator to work out what “nine figures” over five years means ($100,000,000). I just can’t wrap my head around why he still has Billy bookcases from Ikea.

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‘People said I didn’t have enough talent’: the rise of Italy’s graphic novel gonzo

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Michele Rech aka Zerocalcare’s book signings attract huge crowds and now he has a hit Netflix animated series inspired by his life

Michele Rech is uncomfortable with success. The shy 38-year-old comic book artist, who works from a modest apartment on the outskirts of Rome, does not use the word “fame” but refers instead to his rise to national prominence as a “thing” he struggles to manage.

In the art world, he is known as Zerocalcare and is the cartoonist’s equivalent of Hunter S Thompson. Rech’s graphic novels are a form of gonzo journalism – inspired by his own adventures as a protester on the frontlines of police violence in Italy, and in Syria, where he was embedded with Kurdish forces.

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Hogging the limelight: how Peppa Pig became a global phenomenon

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Boris Johnson threw spotlight on show that has run for 17 years and been exported to 118 countries

To many families taking their excited children to Peppa Pig World, the most surreal aspect isn’t the pastel-hued streets or the giant cartoon animals milling around; it’s the soundtrack. Piped from speakers spread around the park, the can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head theme tune plays on a continuous loop, and parents could be forgiven for feeling they’ve entered a nightmare rather than a toddler’s dreamscape.

Not so for Boris Johnson. The prime minister was so buoyed by his Sunday enjoying delights such an egg-shaped boat ride overlooked by Grampy Rabbit, where he was photographed grinning alongside his one-year-old son Wilfred and wife Carrie, that he was moved to praise the New Forest amusement park effusively in a speech to business leaders on Monday.

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‘A very dangerous way to run a show’: reclusive Simpsons writer speaks out

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John Swartzwelder, known for creating some of the best Simpsons episodes, has opened up about the show’s heyday – and why Homer is a big talking dog

The reclusive Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder, who is credited with creating some of the most popular episodes in the show’s 31-year history, has given his first interview since leaving the hit series 18 years ago.

The screenwriter, who wrote 59 episodes between 1990 and 2003 – including the James Bond parody You Only Move Twice and Homer the Great, which memorably featured the Stonecutters sect – spoke to the New Yorker’s Mike Sacks via email. Introducing his subject, Sacks described Swartzwelder as a cult figure for his offbeat work on the show, “conjuring dark characters from a strange, old America: banjo-playing hobos, cigarette-smoking ventriloquist dummies … pantsless, singing old-timers”.

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Morrissey hits back at The Simpsons over ‘hurtful and racist’ parody episode

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Manager posts critical statement on singer’s behalf after Panic on the Streets of Springfield airs

The Simpsons has earned the wrath of Morrissey after it parodied the former Smiths frontman in an episode of the show.

The singer was satirised during the episode Panic on the Streets of Springfield, which aired in the US on Sunday night. In the episode, Lisa Simpson becomes obsessed with a fictional band called the Snuffs and befriends its frontman, Quilloughby.

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That’s not all folks: why is there so much animated TV for adults?

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Adult humour in cartoons was once virtually unheard of – now, animated TV is saturated with grown-up jokes

In the Guide’s weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you’ve been burning to know the answer to – and settle it, once and for all

The phrase “The Simpsons did it first” gets thrown around a lot. But Matt Groening’s sitcom about a volatile nuclear family – now 700 episodes in and recently renewed until at least 2023 – was a genuine trailblazer. In 1990, its second season premiere received more than 30 million US viewers, proving a brightly coloured animated TV series with whip-smart writing could attract mature eyeballs in primetime. If their children liked it too, all the better.

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Hank Azaria apologises ‘to every Indian person’ for voicing Apu in The Simpsons

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Azaria, who is white, voiced the role of the Indian American shopkeeper from show’s inception in 1989 but stood down last year

The actor Hank Azaria has apologised “to every single Indian person” for his portrayal of Apu in The Simpsons.

Azaria, who is white, voiced the role of the Indian American shopkeeper from the show’s inception in 1989 but stood down last year amid criticism of racial stereotyping. He said he was willing to be held accountable for its “negative consequences”.

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The Simpsons’ Dr Hibbert: Harry Shearer replaced by black actor Kevin Michael Richardson

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After more than 30 years in the role, Shearer’s replacement reflects show’s commitment to no longer have white actors voicing black characters

After more than 30 years playing Dr Julius Hibbert on The Simpsons, Harry Shearer will be replaced by voice actor Kevin Michael Richardson – seven months after the show’s producers committed to no longer have white actors voicing black characters.

On Monday, Fox confirmed the episode that aired last night in the United States, Dairy Queen, would be Shearer’s last as Hibbert. From Sunday, the doctor will be played by Richardson instead. Shearer will continue voicing his other characters, which include Mr Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders and Reverend Lovejoy.

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The Simpsons stops using white actors to voice non-white characters

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Move comes amid widespread reckoning for American pop culture following mass protests after George Floyd’s death

The Simpsons is ending the use of white actors to voice characters of colour, the show’s producers have said.

“Moving forward, ‘The Simpsons’ will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters,” they said in a statement on Friday.

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People opened up because I’m the Beavis and Butt-head guy’: Mike Judge on his new funk direction

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The writer-director’s comedies – from Office Space to Silicon Valley – always sum up the spirit of their times. So why has he made an LSD-soaked cartoon about George Clinton and Bootsy Collins?

Few writer-directors have been as consistent and ruthless at capturing the moment as Mike Judge, although he never actually intends to do so. “It’s always a shock when something comes out and it feels so relevant,” he says, in his laconic surfer-dude tone, talking to me by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “But I tend to look at stuff that feels as if it’s everywhere, but nobody’s talking about.”

Judge, 57, is so beady at spotting what’s everywhere, his shows themselves end up becoming ubiquitous, the thing everybody’s talking about. It is impossible to imagine 90s TV without his seminal hits, Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, the former satirising the worst of youth culture, the latter fondly depicting gentle American conservatism acclimatising itself to the Bill Clinton era.

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‘We good now China?’ South Park creators issue mock apology after ban

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Facetious statement comes after reports that show was banned in China after episode critical of the country

South Park’s creators have responded with a mock apology to reports that China has censored the programme, ridiculing the country and comparing President Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.

The “apology” from Trey Parker and Matt Stone comes after reports on Monday that China had scrubbed all episodes, clips and content related to the long-running comedy cartoon from Chinese streaming and social media platforms in response to a recent episode that was critical of the country.

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Aardman’s 20 best films – ranked!

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From early experiments in claymation TV to its forthcoming Shaun the Sheep big-screen sequel, we rate the animation studio’s output

After it was used for a perfume ad, Nina Simone’s jazz classic made it into the top 10 in the autumn of 1987. Inspired, no doubt, by the (non-Aardman) video for a successful re-release of Jackie Wilson’s Reet Petite earlier in the year, this music video became a second bite at claymation-meets-1950s. Peter Lord, who directed, went with a sultry singing cat and some artistic shots of piano keys.

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The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century

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Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say

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Simpsons producers withdraw Michael Jackson episode

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Child abuse allegations in Leaving Neverland prompt cartoon’s makers to act

An episode of The Simpsons featuring Michael Jackson’s voice has been pulled by its producers after a powerful documentary accused the star of sexually abusing two men when they were children.

The HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, which was shown on Channel 4 this week, featured James Safechuck and Wade Robson who claimed they were sexually abused by Jackson.

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