Sunday, July 20, 2014

Saturtainment: 101 Dalmatians (1997)

On the heels of a live-action remake of their 1961 film, Disney moved 101 Dalmatians to television. That was the good news. The bad news was the show didn't last very long.

The series aired as part of ABC's One Saturday Morning block, but for some reason, viewers turned away from these dogs, just as a vast majority rejected WB's Road Rovers a year earlier. The message, apparently, was that they just felt that any dog not named Scooby-Doo would not draw eyeballs to the small screen.

The premise had the pups and their owners, the Dearlys, now living on a farm, but, unfortunately, Cruella de Vil is never far away to cause more mayhem. You'd think she'd have learned her lesson. The voice cast includes the usual standbys (i.e. Tara Strong, Frank Welker, Jim Cummings), plus Charlotte Rae (ex-The Facts of Life) and Pam Dawber (ex-Mork & Mindy), who was doing her first voice acting since an animated sequence in the movie, "Stay Tuned", a few years earlier.

Following is a sample episode:



Rating: B.

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