Bob and Margaret
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Bob and Margaret was a Canadian animated television series that was also shown in the United States and United Kingdom. It was based on the Academy Award winning animated short Bob's Birthday, featuring the same main characters. The award-winning series is one of the few Canadian TV shows to ever have regular American exposure.
The show revolved around a married English couple named Bob and Margaret Fish, a middle class 40-ish working couple with no children and two dogs. Bob is a dentist and Margaret is a chiropodist (podiatrist for American viewers, though the term was not dubbed and changed during US broadcasts of the episodes).
In the first two seasons, Bob and Margaret lived in England. For the third and fourth seasons, however, they moved to Canada, allowing the writers to explore the humour of culture clash. This was due to pressure applied by the Canadian production company funding the show (as well as the government) to have future episodes be based in Canada instead of England. The creators of the series (real-life husband-and-wife David Fine and Alison Snowden, see below) were against this change and gave up control on direction and editing, becoming "consultants" to the show (though Snowden continued to provide the voice of Margaret). Some of the Canada-based episodes use the "culture clash" theme to parody this pressure and regulation.
The program was shown in the United Kingdom on ITV and Channel 4, and in the United States on Comedy Central. Comedy Central only showed the two "London" seasons. The third and fourth "Toronto" seasons were eventually shown (almost 2 years after Comedy Central showed the last second season episode) on the Showtime cable channel; they currently rerun all four seasons on their specialty "Showtime Women" channel
The series was produced by Nelvana, a Toronto animation studio, and created by Canada-based David Fine and United Kingdom-based Alison Snowden. The series was based on the short film Bob's Birthday, which won the Best Animated Short Film Oscar in 1994.
Cast (incomplete)
- Andy Hamilton (1998-2000)/Brian George (2000-2001) ... as Bob Fish (voice)
- Alison Snowden ... as Margaret Fish (voice)
External link
- Bob and Margaret at IMDB.com (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122813/)