debbieann33 Review of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show

The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show (1983–1985)

An Uneasy Transition To Saturday AM TV for the Peanuts Gang

[9 August 2005]

This was Schulz and Melendez's attempt at a Saturday Morning series, which didn't quite pan out as well as they'd hoped. "...we didn't have the time to do it right", Schulz himself once said. The shows often seemed like they were rushed through production, with small things like timing and bigger things like the animation itself showing the results of this process. But it is a charming (if flawed) series, showcasing Schulz's characters as themselves, in their usual settings from the daily and Sunday strips, rather than in a motocross or river rafting or some such bigger plot. Perhaps Schulz's humor was a bit too sophisticated and slow paced for the crowd weaned on the Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks, as the series vanished after 13 episodes, to return in 1985 with just five more (probably to fill holes in CBS's schedule when sporting events weren't scheduled) with a slightly different format, (and an obnoxious new theme song) featuring just three segments at the same length rather than the previous episodes where the material seemed to dictate how long a sequence ran, as well as a few "kiddified" stories, "Giant", a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk with Snoopy and Woodstock and "Snoopy's Robot" in which the kids go to a computer camp.