Futurama, for the creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening is an absolutely brilliant cartoon which rivals The Simpsons in terms of laughs per episode. Futurama is set in the year 3000. Fry, a dumb college drop-out from the year 2000 is frozen and awakened in the year 2000.

He then makes friends with a foul-mouthed, beer swilling robot called Bender and his workmates Leela, Dr Zoidburg and co.

The cartoon is a very good one, which is quite similar to the Simpsons in terms of main characters. Bender is very similar to Homer, whilst Leela is akin to Marge. Unfortunately due to similarities such as this, Futurama took a long time to take off as people thought it a cheap imitation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Futurama is a cartoon suitable for adults as well as children and despite its humour being low-brow it strikes a chord with me and many other millions of viewers. Basically in each episode the team takes off on a mission to deliver something somewhere as they are a space age delivery team.

The appearance of the cartoon is bright without being garish and adds to the fun feel. There are some really superb jokes in every episode such as “I once had a girlfriend who talked like that, only she wasn’t really my girlfriend, she just lived across the street and keep her curtains open.”

The characters are really funny in their own different ways. The Professor is generally a dozy old man and is humorous for that. The main characters are pals Fry and Bender and these are consequently the funniest. Benders beer fuelled antics never fail to amuse me whilst Fry’s sheer stupidity is unmatched by anyone.

The best episode that I have ever seen is when Fry and Bender sign up to the army in order to claim a free pack of fresh ham flavour chewing gum. They are then made to fight against the bouncing eyes in an intergalactic war. The timing of some of the jokes is incredible such as
when they are signing up-“So we don’t actually have to fight?”
“Not unless war were to be declared” They sign form, Siren goes off
“What’s that?”
“War were declared!”

The story in the episodes is well thought out and detailed whilst being easy to follow. Overall Futurama is an excellent cartoon which is simply hilarious with great one-liners as well as general jokes.