TVSquad

Starting July 14 at 8:00 and 8:30 p.m., Discovery Health will air a new program called Doctor*ology, a look at all the different "ologies" going on at your local hospital.

The series will be hosted by actor Leslie Nielsen, who will inject a bit of comedy into each episode along with his nephew, Robert. Based on the press releases, expect an educational program with plenty of goofy comedy to make it appealing.

A series of documentaries originally created to coincide with George Lucas' The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (the title of a VHS version of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) will be aired on the History Channel sometime next year.

The channel acquired rights to all ninety-four of the educational documentaries through a deal with Lucas. They cover such topics as ballet, Al Capone and slavery.

In an interview with Tosche Station, producer Rick McCallum described the documentaries as a kind of timeline that follow young Indiana as he meets different historical figures. McCallum also said the first set of Young Indiana Jones DVDs could be out before Christmas.

[via Geeks of Doom]

Happy Monday, everybody. I've compiled some interesting news and tidbits from the world of animation just for you:

In keeping with the current trend of depicting cartoon characters as real people, someone has drawn the South Park characters as real people.

As reported by Brad last February, classic Gumby shorts are now available on YouTube, Google Video, and In2TV (which is run by TV Squad's parent company, AOL). The shorts are being made available through DMGI, which is also releasing a Gumby DVD later this year. I've placed the first Gumby short at the end of this post.

I'm just old enough to remember watching Schoolhouse Rock on ABC, and getting all those catchy but educational songs stuck in my head. The series of shorts that popped up between cartoons on Saturday mornings was conceived by Thomas G. Yohe and based on the simple idea that rock lyrics stick in kids' minds easily, so why not make them educational? The series has become one of the defining pop cultural icons of Generation X, and YesButNoButYes has a brief history of the series and the men and women behind it, complete with video clips. The piece mentions Jack Sheldon (the "I'm Just a Bill" guy) lent his voice to an episode of Family Guy, but it forgets to mention he was also the voice of the "Amendment To Be" in an episode of The Simpsons: "There's a lot of flag burners / who have too much freedom / I wanna make it legal for policemen / to beat 'em." It's a great bit of TV history, definitely worth checking out.

Tom Snyder Productions, the company best known for its use of the Squigglevision animation technique which resulted in such cult faves as Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist and Home Movies, also tried its hand at Saturday morning children's entertainment with Science Court, a show which dipped from the same well of humor as his other productions but with more of a kiddy slant. You know, dry and witty science humor for little kids.

Actually, it was probably the "dry and witty" part that pretty much guaranteed the show wouldn't last more than a year, since it was clearly aimed at little kids who weren't necessarily interested in the kind of cerebral humor the show would occasionally delve into. Those of us who knew Snyder's other productions, though, could at least enjoy hearing many of the same voice talents, including H. Jon Benjamin. Still, the show, which would pit lawyers against one another in a trial over scientific principles (thus, the "learning" part) managed to stick out from whatever else was on ABC Saturday morning in 1997. Unfortunately, it was one of many Saturday morning gems, like Freakazoid and The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, that never quite gained the audience it deserved.