Comic strip favorite Garfield made such an impact on his yearly holiday specials that in 1988 CBS gave him his own Saturday morning cartoon. Airing from 1988-1995, Garfield and Friends featured new animated adventures of Garfield, Odie, Jon Arbuckle, and the other characters in Garfield's world plus each episode featured a segment featuring the U.S. Acres characters, another comic strip created by Garfield author Jim Davis. Lorenzo Music, a fixture of the cartoon voice actor circuit (best remembered as Peter Venkman on The Real Ghostbusters) and Carlton the Doorman on Rhoda, played Garfield himself. Most of the Garfield segments were traditional animated adventures about love of television, lasagna, and other Garfieldian aspects of the life of a cat, however some segments departed from the formula and broke the fourth wall of show as Garfield would often address the audience. U.S. Acres featured the adventures of Orson the pig and his farm friends Roy, Wade, Sheldon, Booker, Bo, and Lanolin.

The standard format of the show was to open with a Garfield segment, followed by a U.S. Acres adventure, then closing with another Garfield and a Quickie which was a 30-second animated rendition of a classic comic strip from either series. The show was expanded from 30 minutes to one hour after it became popular and was simply a doubled-up edition of the show.

The show ended its run after the Federal Communications Commission cracked down on non-educational childrens' programming in the early 1990s and CBS subsequently dumped the majority of its Saturday morning schedule in favor of education programming (or something very close to it). Reruns of the show were sold into syndication and to cable network Nickelodeon where it ran in a 30-minute edited format.

Cast


References:
http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/saturday/sa1295.php
Watching the show in my youth

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