Family Dog (TV series)

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Family Dog
The Binfords and the dog.
Genre	Animation
Creator(s)	Brad Bird
Voices of	Martin Mull - Skip Binford Molly Cheek - Beverly Binford Danny Mann - Family Dog Zak Huxtable Epstein - Billy Binford Cassie Cole - Buffy Binford
Theme music composer	Danny Elfman
No. of episodes	10 (5 were aired)
Production
Producer(s)	Chuck Richardson
Executive producer(s)	Steven Speilberg Tim Burton Dennis Klein
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Original run	June 23, 1993 – July 21, 1993
Links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Family Dog is the story of an average suburban family, the Binfords, as told through the eyes of their dog.

1 Original Episode
2 CBS series
3 The video game
4 External links

[edit] Original Episode

In the original episode, a dog (simply called "the dog") is the main character. The special has three stories: The first involves general misadventures in the house, with him being both ignored and somewhat mistreated by his owners. The second is a "home movie" showing their Christmas (the family narrates), which culminates with the dog eating the turkey. In the third robbers break into the family's house twice, so the father sends the dog to attack dog school were he will learn to become a "quivering, snarling, white-hot ball of canine terror" and fend off burglars. The burglars' van has the license plate A113 (an inside joke in many Pixar and Disney movies).

Written and directed by Brad Bird (who also did the voice of the dog) with music by Danny Elfman, it was one of the most popular episodes of NBC's Amazing Stories weekly anthology series. It is one of the animated films, along with "The Brave Little Toaster" and "The Little Mermaid" to show the real potential of the medium after decades of animated features with poor storytelling and wasted production value. Animators included such notable names as Dan Jeup, Ralph Eggleston, Chris Buck, Sue Kroyer, Gregg Vanzo, David Cutler, Rob Minkoff, Alan Smart and Darrell Rooney.

Skip Binford (the father) was voiced by Stan Freberg.
Bev Binford (the mother) was voiced by Annie Potts
Billy Binford (the son) was voiced by Scott Menville.
Gerte Lestrange (the dog trainer) was voiced by Mercedes McCambridge.

[edit] CBS series

After the success of the special, a very short-lived CBS series was produced without the involvement of the original Writer/Director, Brad Bird.

The CBS series, produced by Steven Speilberg and Tim Burton (who also contributed character designs), and written by Dennis Klein, was roundly panned for it's crude scripts and cheap production values. After the first 2 episodes aired, it was pulled from the CBS schedule. Remaining episodes were sold to local markets as program filler.

During the opening of a Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" episode, the words "Family Dog" as well as "Capitol Critters" and "Fish Police" appear on tombstones. This poking fun at the fact that they were all animated series and all had relatively short on-air life spans.

[edit] The video game

The show was later turned into a quirky Super Nintendo game about the life of an everyday family dog. The player has to go places such as beach and the dog pound and defeat stereotypical obstacles and enemies like dog catchers and cats.