Andy DehnartComedy Central’s satirical cartoon series, AMC’s first reality show both debut tonight.
Two new reality series kick off tonight, and both make fun of the genre. That’s most obvious with Comedy Central’s Drawn Together, an animated series debuting at 10:30 p.m. ET that finds eight fake cartoon characters living in a house.
They’re not for kids, though; as the Boston Herald points out, they include “a Disneylike fairy-tale princess who turns out to be a racist, an Internet-spawned character named Spanky Ham who is as crude as he is crudely drawn and an Asian trading card creature named Ling-Ling who is a sociopath.” The combination of animation and reality TV has created a series that’s “a raunchy, politically incorrect and extraordinarily witty spoof of both reality TV and archetypal cartoon characters beloved by generations of kids,” according to the Mercury News’ review.
Elsewhere, The Hollywood Reporter warns that the debut episode includes ” there’s self-mutilation here, lesbian kissing scenes, beheadings, public urination and more”–which is certain to have us all tuning in. … A half-hour earlier on AMC, that network jumps into reality TV with Film Fakers, a six-episode series that marries Project Greenlight with Joe Schmo.
AMC says the series “seemingly gives young actors their big break in a low-budget film” but “the film’s ‘cast and crew’ are all actors themselves out to create chaos on the set, testing the patience and determination of the new actors.” An AMC VP tells the New York Times “this is more than a reality show. It’s a comedic take on the moviemaking process and movie genres.” According to the paper, “rather than view his program as exploitive or cruel, [show creator Dave Noll] said he prefers to see it as a ‘twisted’ form of wish fulfillment.”