According to Hollywood Reporter, the Cartoon Network is releasing a new version of Looney Tunes.
“The Looney Toons Show” will star Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, along with Yosemite Sam, Tweety, Sylvester — the whole gang. Weirdly, the network is having each episode as a half-hour story along with “cartoons within a cartoon.” The concept takes Bugs and Daffy out of the woods (awww) and puts them into the suburbs (arrrh!) with “colorful neighbors.” You would think in the age of YouTube, re-embracing the show’s original seven-minute short-form format would be the smart play here instead of trying for a weekly version of “Desperate Houseduck.”
Other new programming includes:
“MAD,” based on MAD Magazine. The animated sketch-comedy, “utilizing a chaotic mix of animation styles and twisted humor to pull back the curtain and expose the truth behind movies, TV shows, games, pop culture and, of course, curtains!”
Robotomy, Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, Young Justice, Run It Back Sunday and Cartoon Network’s Hall of Game.
Now, I would watch Desperate Houseduck.
If I thought this would make kids go in reverse, going from Desperate Houseduck to the original 7 minute shorts (which are more like 6 minutes), I could take solace in that. But it never works that way.
I guess the Simpsons made the jump from the short on Tracey Ullman Show, but they had no pressure from years and years of conditioning (i.e. Looney Toons are shorts). I like the fact they are trying to go back to the classics, but it’s a pretty high standard to live up to. Should be interesting.
I suspect that this will be as unfunny as all the other attempts of WB to resurrect the glory days of these characters.
I hold out very little hope for this, and indeed, mostly fear it. There’s not exactly a sterling track record for these sorts of things.
“Cartoons within a cartoon” sounds like “clip show” to me … where they create a couple of minutes of new animation and story designed to segue (ham-fistedly) into the classic theatrical shorts.
If their not going to bother creating anything new, I’d rather they just re-run the classic cartoons without the pretense.
Was I hallucinating, or was there a “Mad TV” a while back?
The Brits certainly manage to pull this kind of thing off. It’s not the format; it’s the execution.
There was a MAD TV, but aside from the title and the “Spy vs. Spy” skits, it had nothing to do with the magazine.
The MAD show airing on CN is supposidly much closer to the magazine.
The new CN animated MAD series has been in the works for some time, but just was recently announced so now I guess we can actually admit we know about it. A number of MAD artists have been contacted to be involved… the level of our involvement is as yet undetermined.
MAD TV was a SNL clone sketch comedy show on Fox that had zero to do with the magazine. Alfred appeared on the logo and they had some short SvS cartoons in the beginning but they disappeared very quickly.
The CN show will be all animated.
“Was I hallucinating, or was there a ?Mad TV? a while back?”
It was actually on for eleven years. Really.
I’m not sure about this idea. Mad TV, yes. New Looney Tunes? I’m a little wary. I’m with Norm, just bring me the originals complete with all their cartoon violence.
A purple Bugs? I don’t think the color on my monitor is that far off. What we’ve been seeing in the last thirty-forty years in cartoons has been mostly what Chuck Jones referred to as “animated radio”. I’m willing to give it a shot, but it will take a lot of quality work for me to be convinced they’ve got it right. If they can keep things more like “Rabbit Seasoning”, “No Barking”, “Bully For Bugs” and “Chow Hound”, that’ll be great, but I fear we may be in for more like “False Hare”, the ill-fated pairing of Daffry Duck and Speedy Gonzales or the truly awful post-Jones Roadrunners.
It’s going to take a while to get used to Looney Tunes in 3D. I had a viewMaster (remember those?), and one of the slide3 sets I had was “Peanuts”. They just didn’t look right in 3D.
P.S. However, the reflection of the Roadrunner on the Coyote’s chef’s knife is an impressive detail.