Bite my shiny metal...oops! (Futurama)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Futurama
Date:	17/08/00 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: As funny as The Simpsons

Disadvantages: Sci-Fi humour might put people off

I can honestly say that there are only 2 programmes that are on the television currently that I find funny, and by funny I mean laugh out loud funny.

If you hadn't guessed already, one of them is Futurama, the other is (not surprisingly) The Simpsons.

Obviously, everyone is comparing the two, given that they were produced by the same people, but I would consider that to be unfair - it's going to take on hell of a cartoon (or any comedy tv programme) to beat The Simpsons, but I'll tell you one thing, Futurama is going to try!

Based around the exloits of Fry, a 20th Century pizza delivery boy, who accidentally gets frozen for 1,000 years - he falls into a stasis booth on New Years Eve delivering a pizza to a hoax call. After arriving in the future, he teams up with a one eyed alien (voiced by the same woman who plays Peggy in "Married With Children") called Leela, an alcoholic, kleptomanic robot called Bender (my favourite character), a rich, single girl, a Jamaican civil servant, an alien lobster like doctor and Fry's very distant (due to the 1,000 year sleep) nephew, who also owns the freight firm that they all work for.

Being a space delivery boy for Professor Farnsworths freight firm also opens up "strange new worlds" for them all to have adventures in, and with each episode taking the mickey out of any Sci-Fi show you care to mention, there are laughs all the way through.

Like The Simpsons, famous people crop up every now and again as themselves (including Simpsons' favourite Leonard Nimoy) and this also produces a lot of laughs.

Some of the episodes, while including a lot of science fiction humour, also contain a lot of references to other famous movies - one episode is a mickey taking exercise of Titanic, and another takes the mick out of those early 80's college movies (Animal House springs to mind).

Like The Simpsons, each epsiode bears repeat viewing a
s the are nice little touches that are not always apparent first time round, and you are usually laughing too hard to notice them anyway.

There are some regular characters in Futurama (not counting the main group) but most are forgettable, apart from Zapp Branigan, a Captain Kirk wannabe.

I have to say that I think Futurama has taken over as my favourite programme on the telly, with The Simpsons a close second. If you like The Simpsons, then you should give this a try, especially if you like science fiction and don't mind it being the brunt of jokes.

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