Dog City


Dog City is an American/Canadian animated television series that was produced by Nelvana Limited and Jim Henson Productions in association with Channel 4, Global Television Network, FORTA and Canal+ Spain and aired on FOX from September 26, 1992 to November 26, 1994 and in Canada on Teletoon until 2000. The show contained both animation by Nelvana, and puppetry by Jim Henson Productions, similar to Little Muppet Monsters.

TV movie

Dog City was originally an hour-long live-action TV movie, broadcast on May 5, 1989 as an episode of The Jim Henson Hour, featuring the characters as puppets. In Dog City: The Movie, Ace Yu inherits a bar-restaurant called the Dog House following the death of his Uncle Harry and is harassed for protection money by crime syndicate boss Bugsy Them. Refusing to pay or fight him, Bugsy kidnaps Ace's love interest, Colleen. There are car chases and shoot-em-ups and rubber duckies involved in the action. In the end, Ace defeats Bugsy and gets the girl.

Characters

Dog City: The Movie also features cameos by Sprocket the Dog from Fraggle Rock, Lyle the Dog and Baskerville the Hound from The Muppet Show, a dog character that resembles Tramp from Lady and the Tramp, and a background pug that later appears in Jim Henson's Animal Show, Puppet Up!, and other Henson Alternative projects.
The Muppets of Ace Yu and his associates would make cameos in The Muppets at Walt Disney World and would later go on to become Eliot Shag and the other "real world" counterparts to the animated characters.
Dog City: The Movie was released to regions 1 and 2.
The company's YouTube channel has 6 clips from the pilot in a playlist called "Dogs of Anarchy!".

Plot

The animated portions of the show focused on a canine private investigator named Ace Hart. The Muppet portions of the show focused on the interactions between Ace Hart and his animator Eliot Shag. Eliot would illustrate the stories while Ace would go traverse through it, occasionally breaking the fourth wall to speak with Eliot about the various troubles with the story. In one episode, Eliot even enters Dog City himself to join Ace in solving a mystery.
A recurring gag was that many of the characters in the cartoon were seemingly based on the residents of Eliot's apartment building. The bulldog crime-boss Bugsy Vile was inspired by the building's grouchy bulldog superintendent Bruno. Ace's love interest Rosie was based on Eliot's deep feelings for his neighbor Colleen, and so on. The Muppet characters were unaware of this. In the first episode, Bruno asks Eliot how a loser like him could have created a great character like Bugsy. Eliot replies, "Sometimes it just stares me right in the face."
Later series included segments from other shows Eliot worked on, including skits featuring the main Dog City characters and a superhero series starring the Batman parody Watchdog.

Characters

Animated

Series overview

Season 1 (1992–93)

Season 2 (1993)

Season 3 (1994)

Cast

Muppet performers

Two VHS tapes with two episodes each were released by Sony Wonder. Much Ado About Mad Dog contains the episodes Much Ado About Mad Dog and Old Dogs, New Tricks. The Big Squeak contains the episodes The Big Squeak and Boss Bruiser. Another tape, Disobedience School was released in the UK through Channel 4 and contains the episodes Disobedience School, The Dog Pound, and Radio Daze.
Dog City: The Movie was released to UK exclusive region 2 DVD, and a Region 1 DVD was released on June 8, 2010, though the series has not had any DVD release. Most episodes of all three seasons are available from Amazon Video on Demand.