TVSquad

If you lamented the early cancellation of CBS' Creature Comforts as I did, don't shoot yourself just yet: all seven episodes will be available on DVD October 9. The set will also include interviews not shown on television.

Creature Comforts began as a UK series, based on the Oscar-winning short by Nick Park (Wallace and Gromit). The American version, like the British version, features real-life interviews filtered through animated animals, resulting in what I thought was a funny and often poignant new way of experiencing everyday conversation among normal people. Apparently not too many viewers felt the same way, because the series didn't last long.

(S02E19)

This is an early review.

Clay Puppington: Hunting dogs are just nature's rabbits.

With every episode, more and more layers have been peeled back from the dynamic between Orel and his father. At first, Orel seemed blissfully ignorant of his father's distance and abuse, but over the course of this season, Orel, like all kids do eventually, is realizing his father is only human, and not a very sane one, either.

I have never seen the original Creature Comforts, neither the Oscar-winning short film by Nick Park and Aardman Animation, nor the British TV series, so I can't compare the new American version to them, but I can say that the upcoming CBS animated series Creature Comforts is one of the most engaging and charming things I've seen in a long time.

Don't expect something goofy and fast-paced like The Simpsons or Family Guy, because that's not the kind of laughs this series is going for. Instead, the series takes interviews with regular people and then sticks their words into the mouths of cartoon animals. For example: two men sniffing wine become two dogs sniffing another dog's butt.

National Geographic has eight new series (and some returning series) on tap, set to roll out over the next several months.

Inside the Green Berets airs June 3 at 9:00 p.m.

Inside the Taliban airs June 4 at 9:00 p.m.

Critical Situation, a new series that explores how people responded when faced with some of the most dramatic moments in history kicks off June 12 at 9:00 p.m. I'll be posting a preview of this new series soon.

Those of you who are lucky enough to own an HDTV should check out Planet Earth tonight on Discovery Channel. I keep seeing previews for it today as I absent-mindedly watch a marathon of Deadliest Catch and it looks stunning. The series is basically Earth Science, featuring all sorts of unique animals and plants, and examining various landscapes.

Besides the fact that it looks beautiful, the story behind it is almost as impressive. The miniseries took five years to make and photographers put their lives on the line more than once to document the extreme living conditions on this planet.

Sure, we all like sex, violence and cursing, but if you're like me, sometimes you like to pour yourself a nice cup of tea, settle into the couch, and watch something that's a bit more stimulating to the ol' gray matter. Therefore, here's a few shows coming up on PBS you might want to check out. Note that the first couple shows will air during the pledge period, so you'll have to check your listings for the exact date and time.

Kenny Rogers: The Journey (check local listings for date and time) - This combination concert and retrospective looks at forty years of Rogers' work, including interviews with the musician and singer.

A lot of people would say that being the host of your own TV show, especially one that has your very name in the title, would give you a big ego, a big head. Now we have photographic proof.

A company called Floam has created a couple of giant head replicas of David Letterman and his bandleader sidekick Paul Shaffer. They're on display at Toyfair.

This Floam stuff looks pretty wild and cool. It's "micro beaded modeling fun foam" that comes in blue, yellow, green and fluorescent pink and you can use it on a ton of stuff: make animals with it, decorate skateboards, create masks, and, well, just about anything else you can think of. It's like the 21st century version of Silly Putty.

They would probably make a giant Floamhead of Jay Leno, but I think that's against the law and would scare kids.

Not too long ago Cartoon Network aired a marathon of My Gym Partner's a Monkey episodes followed by a one-hour My Gym Partner is a Monkey movie. If a monkey on a campground as opposed to a monkey in a school is more your cup of tea (or more your kids' cup of tea), Cartoon Network will also be airing a marathon of Camp Lazlo episodes starting at 9am on February 18 and ending with a brand new Camp Lazlo movie, Where's Lazlo? at 7pm. The one-hour movie follows the adventures of Lazlo the monkey after he removes a pinecone from a bear's nose and sets off a wacky chain of events.

New episodes of Camp Lazlo begin February 2.

That would be NATURE, the long-running PBS series, not nature itself, which has been around much longer than twenty-five years. If you're a fan of nature programs like I am, then be sure to check out The Best of NATURE - 25 Years, a ninety-minute retrospective that will look back on the last twenty-five years of the award-winning PBS program that began in 1982. The special will be hosted by Lynn Sherr, who previously hosted the NATURE special about giraffes, "Tall Blondes," based on her book of the same name. The special will look back at old episodes to show how animals must learn to survive in the wild, learn to hunt and/or escape, reproduce, and sometimes readjust to life in captivity. The special will also pay tribute to George Page, the creator of NATURE who passed away last year.

The Best of NATURE - 25 Years airs January 14 at 8 pm on PBS. You can also catch a new NATURE special, "Christmas in Yellowstone," tomorrow night at 8 pm.

We mentioned that this was coming a few months ago, but now it's official: DarynKagan.com launches today.

It's run by ex-CNN newsanchor Daryn Kagan (which is a good thing, or they'd have to come up with a new URL) and will feature only inspirational, uplifting, positive stories. Now, I don't see anything wrong with inspirational, uplifting, and/or positive stories, but I think that it's less a "news" site than a web site with positive features on it. Though I have to admit I'm very curious about three stories that are coming up in the next several days, including one titled "International Breast Milk Banks."

Some of the story categories include "Animals," "Heroism," "Kids," "Love," and "Over 60." I'm assuming the Over 60 category is about people over the age of 60 who are enjoying life and not about people who drive over 60 mph. And what if there's a story about a puppy that saves a kid and a grandparent from a fire? What category would that go in?

[via TV Newser]

I always considered myself a pretty strict Darwinist, but I have to admit, Ricky Gervais, best known for The Office and Extras, does offer a compelling argument for Creationism. The clip after the jump is from Gervais' 2003 stage show Animals, in which he lectures in his own dry British way about the animal kingdom and whatever else pops into his head. It's not like watching a stand-up comedian, per se, but it's very funny, nonetheless. In fact, I'm fairly certain Gervais has said on more than one occasion that he doesn't consider himself a stand-up comedian. Either way, he's on a stage and people are laughing, so why split hairs? You can also buy the DVD with the entire show, but only if you live in the UK. Take that, Americans. Anyway, enjoy the clip, and then watch the second part of it here.

(S02E11) When I watch shows in order to review them for TV Squad, I try to simply sit back and enjoy them as if I were any other fella sitting down to enjoy a TV show. In other words, I try not to get hung up on every little nuance and line of dialogue because I want to appreciate the show as it's meant to be, not turn it into some kind of archaeological dig where I over-examine every detail and completely suck the enjoyment out of the experience. I like to look for little details, of course, but I don't want to lose the whole package. This is my way. Yes, it is.

However, I can't completely neglect the blogger/writer part of me that knows he's going to be typing out something about the show once it's over, and some things I would normally ignore get stuck in my craw because of it. For instance, I thought this recent episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor was very funny, but there were two moments I felt were somewhat beneath the usual bizarre humor I expect from Tim and Eric. The first was a "Benny Hill" chase sequence, which has already been spoofed a million times, and a Scooby-Doo style "unmasking" at the end, which, to be fair, was pretty damn surreal, but I still felt it was a little too easy. These are minor complaints though, and the rest of the episode was pretty funny, I thought.

If you haven't seen the new Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor, I encourage you to check it out. It's being promoted as a kind of mix between a soap opera and a nature documentary, but it's really not all that different than a normal nature documentary where they personalize the animals by giving them names and making them seem more "human" than they actual are. And, quite frankly, Meerkats are adorable creatures, so it works better than say, something like House of Maggots. Actually, that's not a bad idea for a show, either. Wait, it's not? Oh, okay. It also differs from a soap opera in that, unlike human soap operas, I actually care what happens to these animals. The series is narrated by Sean Astin. You can watch clips from the series here.

The fluff-stuffed bear of very little brain is not only popular here in the United States, having recently received a star on the Walk of Fame, but he also topped a recent poll in the UK of favorite animal characters, beating out other bears like Paddington and Baloo from The Jungle Book. Winnie the Pooh received fifty-one percent of the votes through a poll of 1,191 adults, with the daft but lovable Paddington Bear coming in second with forty-one percent of the vote, and Baloo coming in at  third. Other animals such as Peter Rabbit, Black Beauty, and Toad from The Wind in the Willows also finished in top spots. Rather interesting that all of these were originally literary characters before being re-imagined into TV and movie characters.

Despite their long history in comedy, I've never found primates of any kind to be inherently funny. I don't care how human they act, how many cowboy hats you put on them, or how many props you give them, they're just not that humorous. Of course, now I must contradict myself by saying that pretty much anything can be funny if it's placed in the right context, which is why The Chimp Channel, a program which ran on TBS for one season in 1999 and whose cast consisted entirely of chimps, sometimes made me laugh, despite my aversion to the idea of monkeys being a kind of comedic Holy Grail whose mere presence brings comedy to any situation.

In a nutshell, The Chimp Channel was a sketch comedy show with chimps, spoofing the television shows and movies of the day. Based on that premise alone it's no wonder the show only lasted one season, but the writing was actually quite solid and funny, and they were able to get some great performances from the animals. The series was actually much better than it had any right to be. I don't see how a show consisting of an all-chimp cast could have lasted very long, no matter how funny they tried to make it, but the TV landscape has seen more than a few shows like this one that were just too outlandish to ever find a wide audience. If you're lucky enough to catch these types of shows when they're on, they provide a nice respite from the mundanity of "normal" television fare. Also, it helps if you like chimps pretending to be characters from Star Wars.