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