Is Futurama more or less unkillable at this point? Like the Terminator, or Novak Djokovic, the animated sci-fi comedy just keeps coming back – this time, for a 20-episode revival series on Hulu (or Disney+ in the UK). In its heyday, Futurama was a great TV show. Doomed to live forever in the shadow of The Simpsons (both series were created by cartoonist Matt Groening, and featured his signature art style), it nonetheless succeeded on its own creative merits. The initial 72-episode run on Fox, beginning in 1999, still holds up remarkably to this day. Set 1,000 years in the future, in the city of New New York, Futurama was, for a time, the perfect vehicle to satirise the foibles of contemporary life.
And then, in 2003, it was cancelled. For five years, Futurama seemed destined to become a mainstay on every list of “TV series that were cancelled too soon”, a niggling case study of what-might-have-been. But then, in 2008, it was brought back for four straight-to-DVD films. It was clear that something had been lost in the interim; the comedy here came a little less easy, the plotlines a little less electric.
