This Is America, Charlie Brown
This Is America, Charlie Brown is an eight-part animated television miniseries that depicts a series of events in American history featuring characters from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip "Peanuts". It aired from 1988 to 1989 on CBS. The first four episodes aired as a weekly series in October and November 1988; the final four episodes aired monthly from February to May 1989. Due to the nature of the events portrayed and the historical figures included — such as the Wright Brothers and George Washington — the opposite of most Charlie Brown cartoons, many adults were  shown in full view along with the Peanuts gang, something that happened rarely in the animated films and specials and in only one early sequence in the comic strip. These adults were drawn in a style similar to "It's Only a Game", another comic strip by Schulz that featured adults, as well other productions that were overseen by "Peanuts" regular Bill Melendez. While all eight episodes were subsequently rerun by CBS in the summer of 1990, the series as a whole has not been aired since. However, "The "Mayflower" Voyagers" episode returned to television in 2008 (and aired each  year through 2019, after which the "Peanuts" television specials migrated over to the Apple TV+ streaming platform) as companion material to pad the 1973 special "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" to a full one-hour time slot. To accommodate the slot, portions of the episode were abridged. Music. The series included music by many composers and performers including "Peanuts" regular Ed Bogas, Dave Brubeck, David Benoit (who would later take over scoring the specials starting with "It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown"), George Winston, Wynton Marsalis and Dave Grusin. This continued a tradition of using jazz musicians for the musical score ; original composer Vince Guaraldi had died in 1976, though several of his music scores were reused, notably his signature tune, "Linus and Lucy". This miniseries featured The Winans, Desirée Goyette, and Lou Rawls as the singing vocals (Goyette and Rawls had previously worked with Melendez on the "Garfield" TV specials). Cast. Occasional voice actors. Pig-Pen, Violet, and other characters appear a few times but are silent. Home media. The eight episodes, originally released individually on videocassette, were released in a two-DVD collector's set on March 28, 2006, by Paramount Home Entertainment. However, the DVD set went out  of print once Warner Bros. purchased the rights to all "Peanuts" television specials. Warner Home Video has since reissued the miniseries on DVD as of June 17, 2014. It was also released on the digital format.