All hail, the NEW king of animated series.

Covey-3

While the later episodes of The Simpson's have suffered, Futurama has matured, far more quickly than the Simpson's did, into a fantastic work of animation.

The similarities between the Simpson's are obvious and not to be ignored. A show as good as The Simpson's was is ripe for theft and Futurama, the brainchild of Matt Groening, borrows well from the former show. Bender is the Homer Simpson, devoid of responsibility, yet, as this lack of responsibility is placed in a robot, we do not have to feel anger at his wayward ways.

Leela is the far less annoying Marge. Less annoying for the simple facts. A) She has something resembling a personality, something that Marge definitely suffered from. and B) You can listen to her speak without wanting to kill yourself.

Fry however grounds the show with the emotional base that made the Simpson's great. A Pizza delivery boy from the 20th century transported forwards in time 1000 years into a world that he knows nothing about. While our imaginations might find it a little too easy coming to terms with the future and all the few new inventions that go with it (Perhaps a nod to how poor an inventor Farnsworth is that there seems nothing overly unusual about this future), we forgive this minor blip and embrace Groening new world vision.

As with The Simpson's, Groening has given us a host of superb background characters. Zoidberg the lobster Doctor, Amy daughter of money, Hermes the Jamaican limbo champion who keeps the business together and of course Zap Brannigan, the genius of lacklustre. All of these characters are easily the match of Chief Wiggum, Smithers, Krusty, Frink, etc.

Groening, clearly by taking the best writers from the Simpson's with him when he jumped ship, has done the impossible and found an animated series that is superior to the unsurpassable Simpson's. Groening's world is a good one. And so is his show.

score /10

Covey-3 20 September 2000

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0547465/