Garfield and Friends


Garfield and Friends is an American animated television series based on the comic strip Garfield by Jim Davis and ran 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. 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 for the rest of 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

''Garfield''

Regular characters

Regular characters

Additional voices were also provided by Gary Owens and Neil Ross.
There have been several celebrity guest stars who did voice acting on Garfield & Friends for both Garfield & US 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 and Greg Burson.

Episodes

Production

When the show was originally broadcast on CBS, the episodes usually had three Quickies, with usually two "Garfield Quickies" and one "U.S. Acres Quickie," the latter of which was never shown in syndication. 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 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, which is ironically the type of thing the show was against in its later seasons.

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 are also a couple of Quickies called Screaming with Binky. 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:
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 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."

Cancellation

Garfield and Friends had already far outlasted most animated series by the time it reached its seventh season in 1994. Although Garfield was still doing well in the ratings at the time, the Saturday morning cartoon genre as a whole had begun a terminal decline by this point, and CBS began to cut its cartoon budget. Unwilling to continue producing the show under the reduced budget, producers ended the series in 1994.

Theme song

Each episode opened with Gary Owens introducing the show by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, Garfield and Friends!". The first five seasons featured Garfield tap dancing across a fence and turning on a record player. Starting with season six, it opened with a full concert hall.
The first theme song was a song-and-dance style number about friendship. The intro for the show's first two seasons saw Garfield battling Orson, Roy, Wade, Booker and Sheldon 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.
The second, more up-tempo theme song first appeared in the third season and was used until the end of season six. This time, Garfield sang the song along with the rest of the cast and the intro now consisted of clips from previous episodes. This intro was also used for the syndicated rerun package, but all incidental music from the first two seasons' worth of episodes was left intact. It was not until the DVD releases that the intros from those seasons were seen in their entirety again.
In the seventh season, an upbeat rap-based theme song was used, sung by J.R. Johnston, and had a bass line similar to that of the Seinfeld theme. This theme is not included on the DVDs, nor did 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 joke to open the show

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 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 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 is set for release for October 27, 2020.

Region 2

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.
Release nameRelease dateEps No.
Garfield and Friends, Volume One24
Garfield and Friends, Volume One, Disc 18
Garfield and Friends, Volume One, Disc 28
Garfield and Friends, Volume One, Disc 38

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 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, on Sky1 from 1998 to 2002, 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 ; 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, from 1992 to 2001. It also aired on TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network from 1995 to 1997, and Nickelodeon from 1997 to 2000. In 2001, it appeared on the Fox Family Channel until 2003. Toon Disney aired it from 2003 to 2005. Boomerang carried it from 2006 to 2007, September to November 2019, and as of now, December 30, 2019 in HD remastered form. As of November 2018, Boomerang's subscription video on demand site offers over 50 episodes of the series. Starz Encore started airing it on its family channel on January 3, 2018.
Garfield and Friends aired in Canada on the cable TV channel YTV from 1989 to 1996. 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 has also been shown in the American territory Guam on the dual NBC/CBS-affiliated television station KUAM-TV.
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.

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.

''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.
The series does not include the U.S. Acres series and characters, as well as other main characters from Garfield and Friends. 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."