'Mongrels' axed by BBC Three
British comedy puppet series Mongrels has been axed by its television station, BBC3.
The series, described as "Avenue Q meets Family Guy", centred on a troupe of five anthropomorphic animals who hung around the back of a pub on the Isle of Dogs in London.
The animals were Nelson, a metrosexual fox; Destiny, a self-absorbed Afghan hound; Marion, a dim-witted cat; Kali, a sadistic pigeon; and Vince, a foul-mouthed fox.
News of the cancellation was broken by voice actor Dan Tetsell (Marion), who posted on Twitter:
If you were (like me) hoping #mongrels would get a 3rd series, I've got some bad news...
This was later confirmed on the series' official Twitter feed.
Mongrels ran for two seasons. In 2011, series writer Jon Brown won the BAFTA Craft Award for "Break-through Talent", while in 2010 series production designer Simon Rogers and his team won the RTS Design and Craft Award. It was also nominated for the 2010 Ursa Major Award for "Best Anthrompomorphic Dramatic Short Work or Series" (losing to Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention).
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Comments
Well, that sucks. Mongrels was pretty darn good, though I didn't get to see much of the second season since I'm in the USA.
There's a petition floating around to save it, though I suspect it won't.
Hopefully the cast and crew will go on to even bigger and better things.
Well, crap. I really enjoyed it. WHY IS THERE NO GOOD AMERICAN TV!?
Oh well, as long as I still have Doctor Who I'll be happy.
Well, I guess (as much as I hate to) that it's time to torrent series 2. I watched the first series on YouTube, but I guess BBC has become more stringent about their "No TV for you" American policy.
I think it has more to do with television standards and what is deemed 'acceptable' in this country, compared to others.
A lot of the stuff in the series would not fly with the FCC, and if they were to clip and censor it to meet regulations, it probably would not be worth watching.
Standards-wise, it could easily find a place on a cable channel where the FCC restrictions on content are much looser. The tricky part would be convincing cable channels that enough Americans would want to watch the content to make it worthwhile.
The problem I see from clips is the British humor would fly over most American viewers.
A lot of it flew over my head, having been a U.S. resident for six years (and media-adverse before that).
On reflection, the writers probably got through a lot of the best jokes in the two seasons.
That's really unfortunate. From what I saw of the show, all of season one and some of season two, it was pretty enjoyable... but then again I do have odd tastes and the furry aspect of the show didn't hurt it from my point of view either.
In the words of the great philosopher Marion the cat: "Son of bitches"
Still, TBH, after how outrageous the first season was, I was very surprised it managed to get a second. I thought it was one of the best things on TV in years but I can see how it might not play too well with the BBC schedulers. Also they do say that producing puppet shows this complex is rather expensive.
Definitely picking up the second season DVD set the instant it's released.
Awwwwwwe! That was my favorite show : (
Yay now I have nearly no reason to watch BBC 3 at all! I guess I'll just stick with Beeb 1 and 2 when they have something funny on, or the news, or bargain hunt. XD
SDF of Blitzcoder
i hope this gets saved...this was a very interesting show
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