Family Guy

**Family Guy** is an American adult-animated sitcom written and created by Seth McFarlane. It aired in the UK on BBC Three from 2004-2016, and became one of BBC Three’s most popular shows, before the BBC sold the rights to ITV Studios. The final Family Guy Episode to be broadcast on BBC Three was “The Simpsons Guy.”

## Synopsis

The show follows Peter Griffin; the patriarch of the Griffin family, Lois Griffin; the mother of the household, their oldest child Meg (full name Megatron), their middle child Chris, their youngest, British son Stewie and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian.

### Setting

The primary setting of *Family Guy* is Quahog, a fictional city in Rhode Island that was founded by Peter's ancestor, Griffin Peterson. MacFarlane resided in Providence during his time as a student at Rhode Island School of Design, and the show contains distinct Rhode Island landmarks similar to real-world locations. MacFarlane often borrows the names of Rhode Island locations and icons such as Pawtucket and Buddy Cianci for use in the show. MacFarlane, in an interview with Providence's Fox affiliate WNAC-TV, stated that the town is modeled after Cranston, Rhode Island.

### Development

MacFarlane initially conceived *Family Guy* in 1995 while studying animation at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). During college, he created his thesis film entitled *The Life of Larry*, which was submitted by his professor at RISD to Hanna-Barbera. MacFarlane was hired by the company. In 1996 MacFarlane created a sequel to *The Life of Larry* entitled *Larry and Steve*, which featured a middle-aged character named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve; the short was broadcast in 1997 as one of Cartoon Network's *World Premiere Toons*.

Executives at Fox saw the *Larry* shorts and contracted MacFarlane to create a series, entitled *Family Guy*, based on the characters. Fox proposed MacFarlane complete a 15-minute short, and gave him a budget of $50,000. Several aspects of *Family Guy*were inspired by the *Larry* shorts. While he worked on the series, the characters of Larry and his dog Steve slowly evolved into Peter and Brian. MacFarlane stated that the difference between *The Life of Larry* and *Family Guy* was that "*Life of Larry* was shown primarily in my dorm room and *Family Guy* was shown after the Super Bowl." After the pilot aired, the series was given the green light. MacFarlane drew inspiration from several sitcoms such as *The Simpsons* and *All in the Family*. Premises were drawn from several 1980s Saturday morning cartoons he watched as a child, such as *The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang* and *Rubik, the Amazing Cube*.

The Griffin family first appeared on the demo that MacFarlane pitched to Fox on May 15, 1998. *Family Guy* was originally planned to start out as short movies for the sketch show *MADtv*, but the plan changed because *MADtv*'s budget was not large enough to support animation production. MacFarlane noted that he then wanted to pitch it to Fox, as he thought that it was the place to create a prime-time animation show. *Family Guy* was originally pitched to Fox in the same year as *King of the Hill*, but the show was not bought until years later, when *King of the Hill* became successful. Fox ordered 13 episodes of *Family Guy* to air in midseason after MacFarlane impressed executives with a 14-minute pilot.