Some of the most cutting and brutal satire this writer has seen in the past quarter century can be found in Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse series, which provided provocative laughs to the Saturday Night Live mix in 1996-2008.
Since the holidays are just about upon us, it is worth noting that there were a slew of Christmas offerings by TV Funhouse. While I love A Charlie Brown Christmas, the following cynical take on Peanuts definitely has its share of guilty laughs.
The Globetrotters' First Christmas is an outstanding spoof of early 1970's animation, specifically the extra cheesy cheesiness of Filmmation, represented by such TV series as Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids. Did anyone who helped make this sendup of 1970's TV cartoons work at Hanna-Barbera or Filmation?
Rankin-Bass gets both a skewering and a homage in The Narrator That Ruined Christmas.
Many of us who celebrate Hanukkahchristmas or Christmashannukah relate to the following. Love the inspired vocalizing by the great Darlene Love - the not so secret musical weapon of Phil Spector - in this TV Funhouse, which makes me want to go out to a Cantonese, Hunan or Sichuan (a.k.a. Szechwan) restaurant on Christmas and/or Christmas Eve. Stylistically, this reminds me just a tad of Art Clokey and Aardman Animations. . . after all, there is a Shaun The Sheep Christmas.
One can't have too much stuff that is questionable taste - no make that bad taste - during the holidays, so we shall finish today's post with an episode of the TV Funhouse spinoff series. Is it both funny and in incredibly bad taste? Yes.
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