Saturday, July 9, sees the debut of not one but two new, high-profile animated series. NBC and Discovery Kids Channel will kick off action-packed history lessons with Time Warp Trio at 10:30 a.m. ET/8:30 a.m. PT, while Nickelodeon digs at the funny bone with two back-to-back episodes at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Time Warp Trio is based on the popular book series of the same name, written by Jon Scieszka (The Stinky Cheese Man, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs) and illustrated by Lane Smith. The fun begins when 10-year-old city kids Joe, Sam and Fred get their hands on a magic book that has the power to send them anywhere in time or space. Through their adventures, they battle gladiators and march into battle with samurai when they’re not visiting historical figures like Napoleon, Genghis Khan and Thomas Edison. Each episode is created in consultation with historians to provide historical lessons while entertaining young viewers with high adventure.
"The whole series tries to debunk the notion that maybe people were less intelligent just because they lived before us," notes Scieszka, a former school teacher. "We seem to think we’ve reached some kind of pinnacle of knowledge, and everything else that came before was just building up to us. But then you start looking back into history and realize that the Mayan calendar is actually more accurate than ours is today."
Originally slated to bow on July 2, Time Warp Trio is produced for Discovery Kids by WGBH in association with Soup2Nuts. WGBH’s Carol Greenwald serves as exec producer, along with Martha Ripp and Jim Rapsas. Marjorie Kaplan is the exec in charge of production. Major funding was provided by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Another show that’s sure to be an instant hit is Catscratch, an offbeat comedy that follows the misadventures of nouveau riche cats Mr. Blik (Wayne Knight of Seinfeld fame), Gordon (Rob Paulsen from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius), and Waffle (Kevin McDonald from Kids in the Hall). When their adoring owner dies and leaves them a fortune, the mischievous felines are left to do whatever they want, if they can only agree on what that is.
Catscratch is the brainchild of exec. producer Doug TenNapel (Earthworm Jim). The author-illustrator, video game creator and animator says the series is a throwback to the slapstick-style, character-based animal genre made popular by the likes of Tom & Jerry. The three main Catscratch characters were first featured in his epic, 150-page comic, Gear, which got the attention of development execs at Nickelodeon. His graphic novels Tommysaurus Rex and Creature Tech are being developed as feature films by Universal and Fox New Regency, respectively, and his latest comic epic, Earthboy Jacobus, is receiving bids.
Nickelodeon has committed to six episodes of Catscratch, which will air Fridays from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. with back-to-back episodes. The show is produced at Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, Calif., under the supervision of animation director Christine Kolosov and supervising director Mike Girard. Peter Hastings serves as co-exec. producer.
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