Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends is an American animated television series based on the comic strip "Garfield" by Jim Davis and run on CBS Saturday mornings from September 17, 1988, to December 10, 1994, with reruns airing until October 7, 1995. Seven seasons of the series were produced. In addition to the segments featuring Garfield, the series also included segments featuring the characters from "U.S. Acres", a comic strip Davis was drawing concurrently with "Garfield" when "Garfield and Friends" premiered on television. Like the comic strip these were based on, the animated segments were re-titled "Orson's Farm  for viewers outside of the United States (taking the name of their main character, Orson Pig). Although Davis stopped producing new strips of U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm" seven months after "Garfield and Friends" debuted, the characters continued to appear on television throughout the show's run. A total of 121 episodes were made, each consisting of two "Garfield" segments and one "U.S. Acres" segment, totaling 242 "Garfield" segments and 121 "U.S. Acres" segments. All episodes have been released in the U.S. on five DVD sets by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The first season aired in a half-hour  format. Starting with the second season, it switched to an hour-length format, showing two episodes each week. During the last season, while the series was still an hour long, the second half-hour of the show featured either an episode from the previous season or one of the "Garfield" TV specials. On May 25, 2016, 9 Story Media Group acquired the worldwide distribution rights to "Garfield and Friends" and its specials. Characters. Additional voices. Additional voices were also provided by Gary Owens and Neil Ross. Several celebrity guest stars performed voice acting on "Garfield & Friends" for both Garfield & U.S.  Acres portions, including Imogene Coca, Stan Freberg, George Foreman, Chick Hearn, James Earl Jones, Marvin Kaplan, Robin Leach, John Moschitta Jr., Jack Riley, Rod Roddy, Will Ryan, Pat Buttram, Dick Beals, Paul Winchell, Don Knotts, Michael Bell, Arnold Stang, Mark Hamill, Larry Storch and Harvey Korman. Production. When the show was originally broadcast on CBS, the episodes usually had three Quickies (30- to 45-second gags which were based on original "Garfield" and "U.S. Acres" strips, rather than original made-for-TV stories), with usually two "Garfield Quickies" (the first one being played before the intro theme) and one "U.S.  Acres Quickie," the latter of which was never shown in syndication (except occasionally, mainly whenever a Quickie had something to do with the regular full episode it followed; e.g. the 'U.S. Acres Quickie' that follows the episode "Moo Cow Mutt"). Midway through the second season, "Screaming with Binky" quickie-style segments were added. These "Screaming with Binky" segments were typically used at the halfway point of hour-long blocks of "Garfield and Friends" (as Garfield ended each one with "We'll be right back.") to let the viewers know that unlike most Saturday morning cartoons at the time, it was  not over in the usual half-hour. The DVD sets and Boomerang reruns restore the original rotation. After the third season, there was only one "Garfield Quickie" shown per episode. During the first season, most "U.S. Acres" segments were made to teach a social lesson, a concept the show later lampooned. "Garfield and Friends" had outlasted most animated series by the time it reached its seventh season in 1994. Although the series was still doing well in the ratings at the time, the show had become expensive to make and the Saturday morning cartoon format was in decline by this  point. Additionally, while the series itself was doing well, CBS as a whole was a distant third behind NBC and ABC for much of the series' run, and was in the middle of its cost-cutting by Laurence Tisch that resulted in CBS losing broadcasting rights to the National Football League for four years starting in 1994 and subsequently losing many longtime affiliates to Fox, which had outbid CBS for its NFL package. As a result, CBS proposed cutting the budget for the series for another season as part of Tisch's imposed budget cuts. Since syndication of the series  was doing well, producers ended the series in 1994 with its seventh season. Episode segments. Each episode featured most of the following segments: A "Quickie" is a short joke that is used between segments. There is at least one "Garfield" or "U.S. Acres" Quickie per episode. Most of the Quickies are based on a Sunday comic strip, and some on a daily comic strip. There were also Quickie-style segments, "Screaming with Binky", featuring Binky the Clown in seasons 2 and 3. According to one "U.S. Acres" Quickie, they last 45 seconds and most of these were cut out in  syndication. In syndication, the format was as follows: Reception. The quality of "Garfield and Friends" as compared with other 1980s animated television series is considered by animation historian Jerry Beck to "foreshadow the higher quality [animation] boom coming in the next decade". Hal Erickson says that ""Garfield and Friends" rapidly became the hub around which the rest of CBS' morning lineup was built," and it "seemed to get better with each passing season." Theme song. Each episode opens with Gary Owens introducing the show by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, "Garfield and Friends!"" The first five seasons features Garfield tap dancing  across a fence and turning on a record player. Starting with season six, it opens with a full concert hall. The first theme song is a song-and-dance style number about friendship ("Friends are there to help you get started / To give you a push on your way"). The intro for the show's first two seasons sees Garfield battling Orson, Roy, Wade, Booker and Sheldon (who all appear on screen together) for screen time. A series of brief clips would play showing Garfield and the "U.S. Acres" characters resorting to increasingly over-the-top ways to accomplish this , which included Orson shattering Garfield's body with a mallet and Garfield using a jack to move the "U.S. Acres" crew out of frame. These actions also attempt to mimic the flow of the corresponding song lyric lines in some amusing form. The second, more up-tempo theme song ("We're Ready to Party") first appears in the third season (episode 9) and is used until the end of season six. This time, Garfield sings the song along with the rest of the cast and the intro now consists of clips from previous episodes. This intro is also used for  the syndicated rerun package, but all incidental music from the first two seasons' worth of episodes is left intact. It was not until the DVD releases that the intros from those seasons are seen in their entirety again. In the seventh (and final) season, an upbeat rap-based theme song is used, sung by J.R. Johnston, and has a bass line similar to that of the "Seinfeld" theme. This theme is not included on the DVDs (on the DVD set and in international versions, the rap theme is replaced with "We're Ready to Party"), nor does it make its  way onto the rerun package. The close of each version of the theme brought out the show's title screen, where Booker would write "and friends" in pencil below Garfield's name. Garfield would then appear atop the title and offer a (sometimes topical) joke to open the show (e.g., "Welcome to my world... Did you bring food?", "No giant robots, or annoying little blue people!", "Hey Heathcliff, eat your heart out", "I can't believe we get away with this every week.", "Smart kids watch this show. Other kids change the channel", "So if someone wants you to change  the channel kids, just say no!", "Hey, you chewing the gum: I hope you brought enough for everybody!", "Today's show is brought to you by the letter K and the number 9", "Just think of me as like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Pussycat", "Change channels and you'll never see your dog again!", Don't bother checking NBC, kids. They're not running cartoons anymore," and "It doesn't start till the fat lady screams.") Home media. Region 1. In response to the financial success of "", 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released all seven seasons of "Garfield and Friends  to Region 1 DVD in five volume box sets, with each set having 24-25 episodes on three discs. Each set features an image of Garfield with a U.S. Acres" character. These DVD sets show the original telecast versions, rather than the edited versions once seen in syndication and on cable networks. As of October 2013, these releases have been discontinued and are out of print. On May 25, 2016, 9 Story Media Group announced that they had acquired worldwide distribution rights to "Garfield and Friends" and planned to remaster the series in HD and re-release it on DVD . On January 15, 2019, 9 Story Media Group (distributed by Public Media Distribution through its SkipRope label) released a best-of set entitled "20 Garfield Stories" on DVD in Region 1. They have subsequently begun re-releasing the series on DVD in Region 1 in complete season sets; season 1 was released on July 16, 2019, season 2 was released on November 5, 2019, and season 3 was released on October 27, 2020. A 6-disc set titled "The Grumpy Cat Collection" containing the first three remastered seasons, was released on June 15, 2021. Region 2. Fox Entertainment and Davis  released one volume of "Garfield and Friends" on DVD in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2005. It was called "Box of Fun" and it was the same cover as the Vol. 1 box set. Unlike the USA sets, this is just a single disc with 8 episodes. Region 4. Fox Entertainment also released the Volume One set to Region 4 DVD on December 13, 2004. The contents of this set are exactly the same as that of the Region 1 release with only minor changes to the set cover. The set was also made available as individual volumes. The  complete "Volume 1" set is now discontinued. The remaining four volumes were never released. Also released were single-disc compilations based on a theme, such as in 2006. Syndication history. "Garfield and Friends" has been syndicated on television around the world, beginning in the late 1980s and remaining on air in present day. In Latin America, it played on Cartoon Network from 1993 to 2005, on Boomerang from 2005 to 2008, on Warner Channel from 1998 to 2002, and on Tooncast from 2008 to 2016. Currently, all four of these networks have lost the rights to the show. Televisa's  Canal 5 also played the show for many years, from the mid-1990s to early 2000s. In Australia, "Garfield and Friends" began syndication on Network Ten from 1992 to 1999. It also aired on cable television on Nickelodeon for several years. Most recently it played on FOX8 from 2004 to 2006. But it came back and it was played on Eleven (Australian TV channel) from 2011 to 2014. The United Kingdom and the United States remain the highest syndicators of the show. In the UK, it appeared on CITV from 1989 through 2002 (10 minutes per episode), on Sky1 from 1998  to 2002 (also 10 minutes per episode), and on Boomerang from 2003 to 2006 with Season 1 and 2 only. It also appeared on The Children's Channel in reruns. It is unknown if it will ever return to the UK. In Ireland, "Garfield and Friends" aired on RTÉ TWO Monday to Friday at 6pm (followed by "Home and Away"); it replaced RTÉ teen magazine programme "Jo Maxi" and was eventually replaced by "The Simpsons". In the United States, the series appeared in syndication on local stations, distributed by The Program Exchange, between 1993 and 2006 (with broadcast stations  running it into 2001). Only 73 episodes out of the 121 episodes were acquired by The Program Exchange. This was due to the producers selling syndication rights when the show was still on air and CBS wanting to keep the rights for certain episodes. Since the 73-episode syndication package performed well enough on stations already airing the show, acquiring the later episodes were deemed unnecessary. This syndication package also aired on TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network from 1995 to 1997, and Nickelodeon from 1997 to 2000. In 2001, it appeared on Fox Family Channel (and later, ABC Family) until  2003. Toon Disney aired it from 2003 to 2005. Boomerang carried it from 2006 to 2007, and again from 2019 to 2021. As of November 2018, Boomerang's subscription video on demand site offers over 50 episodes of the series. Starz Encore also aired it on its family channel. The series later gained its own 24/7 Pluto TV channel on September 7, 2021. "Garfield and Friends" aired in Canada on the cable TV channel YTV from 1993 to 2001. The show was broadcast on Teletoon's 24-hour classic-animation network, Teletoon Retro, until the channel's shutdown on September  1, 2015. "Garfield and Friends" was also broadcast in New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It aired on TV3 as part of a wrapper programme for children called "The Early Bird Show" by airing on weekday mornings and then on Saturday mornings when the show was shifted to only airing on weekend mornings. "Garfield and Friends" aired on that show up until its cancellation in 1992. The series was played on television in Singapore first airing on Channel 5 from 1990 to 1992 and later on Kids Central from 2004 to 2005. "Garfield and Friends" aired in  South Africa on M-Net as part of their children's block "K-T.V." and was frequently shown numerous times. "Garfield and Friends" later aired on e.tv in the late 2000s. "Garfield and Friends" was originally syndicated by The Program Exchange between 1993 and 2006. Only 73 episodes out of the 121 episodes were acquired by The Program Exchange. This was due to the producers selling syndication rights when the show was still on air and CBS wanting to keep the rights for certain episodes. Since the 73-episode syndication package performed well enough on stations already airing the show , acquiring the later episodes were deemed unnecessary. Streaming. In 2012, the series became available to purchase on the iTunes Store, Amazon Prime Video, and Google TV, along with the series being available to stream on Netflix and Hulu. The series is no longer available on any of the services in the United States as of 2018. GarfieldEats has the show available as part of its app. The show has also been made available for free on youtube Remastered. On October 25, 2018, it was announced that the first 30 episodes of "Garfield and Friends" will be made available to stream  on Boomerang, in remastered form, starting on November 1, 2018. All episodes from the first three remastered seasons are currently available to stream on Boomerang, while the remaining remastered seasons are available to stream on Tubi and Pluto TV. Section::::"The Garfield Show". A new CGI series premiered in 2009. Many crew members on "Garfield and Friends" also worked on this series, such as executive producer/creator Jim Davis and co-writer/voice director Mark Evanier. Frank Welker replaced Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield due to Music's death in 2001, while Wally Wingert replaced Thom Huge as the  voice of Jon Arbuckle due to Huge's retirement in the same year. Other familiar voice actors have also appeared, some of them reprising their roles (such as Gregg Berger as Odie and Herman Post). The series does not include the "U.S. Acres" series and characters, as well as other main characters from "Garfield and Friends" (although characters similar to Booker and Sheldon appear in the episode "Down on the Farm" and Orson was set to appear in that episode but it got scrapped due to some countries not allowing talking pigs in cartoons). In one episode, Binky the Clown  is mentioned, to which Garfield then replies, "My contract says he's not allowed to be in this series."