Doug
The coming of age story is fertile ground in the media. Plenty of books, TV shows and films have tried it, many failing. Few feel quite as well formed though as Doug.
Focussing on the life of a recently relocated pre-teen called Doug Funnie, the show is all about his adventures in life, love and just simply figuring out his place in this new town. Quiet, insecure and with an overactive imagination, Doug was a character that audiences easily bonded with.
Like a lot of animation of the time, each episode though was split into two different tales. This not only made the show nicely varied, it also never let any of the stories be especially sluggish, with them only having a short amount of time for them to say what they needed to say.
Only running a surprisingly modest 52 episodes, the show lasted from 1991 to 1994 in its original run on Nickelodeon before the team behind the show decided to call it a day.
The show was even brought back only two years later in 1996, with Disney wanting to re-launch the animated sitcom. Unfortunately, main voice actor Billy West wasn’t part of the transition, and the show suffered as a result.
While never quite recovering the same charm it had in its original form, the new Doug was still highly successful, running for another three years and creating a movie spinoff (although it wasn’t a patch on the show itself).
The secret to Doug success was that the show even barely considered itself a cartoon, tending more to simply play out as a sitcom that just happened to be animated. It gave Doug a unique air around it as well as making the show far more enjoyable to go back too now, with the slightly sardonic humour a pleasant surprise.
It may have had a colourful array of characters (literally, skin tone was something off an oddity in the Doug world with characters ranging from purple to orange), but Doug’s stories definitely had their feet planted to the ground.
Looking back on the show, it’s easy to see why it was taken to heart so quickly. Insecure, awkward characters dealing with the same situations as the youthful audience watching the show with a great sprinkling of humour? Sounds like a winning combination.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in TV After School Club