Animation

The Simpsons, the Harts, the Belchers and the Griffins will see you in September. New episodes of The Simpsons (Season 32), Bless the Harts (Season 2), Bob’s Burgers (Season 11) and Family Guy (Season 19) premiere Sunday, Sept. 27 on Fox,. Additionally the second season of Duncanville will premiere in 2021.

When The Simpsons premiered in 1989, it was an outlier. Animated shows in primetime were by no means unprecedented — The Flintstones broke that barrier in the ’60s — but never before had an animated series aimed at adults resonated so powerfully or had as significant an impact on a network as The Simpsons did for Fox. Three decades later, though, such series are having their moment in a big way.

As traditional TV production struggles, the medium has steamed ahead, in some cases saving fall lineups or enhancing live-action episodes.

The makers of the NBC drama, which stars James Spader as dashing antihero Raymond Reddington, decided to add animation to a partially taped season finale episode , prompting a far-flung collaboration that stretched from Los Angeles to London and included the Spader family house as a challenging recording studio.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Fox Entertainment has agreed to buy Bento Box Entertainment, a prolific producer of animated content including several shows for Fox Corp.’s broadcast network. Bento Box is the animation house behind Fox’s long-running Sunday night show Bob’s Burgers. The deal will fortify Fox’s pipeline for animation, which has been a staple of its primetime lineup for decades. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.

Actors behind the growing number of animated characters on TV are finally getting their due.