Father of the Pride (2004-5)

 

Creators: Jeffrey Katzenberg and Jonathan Groff

Directors: Klay Hall, John Stevenson, Mark Risley, Bret Haaland, John Holmquist, John Puglisi, Steve Hickner, Mark Baldo and Mike de Seve

Screenplay: Jonathan Groff, Ben Kull, David R. Goodman, Glasgow Phillips, Jon Ross, Jean Yu, Vanessa McCarthy, Jon Pollack, Ron Weiner, Mike Barker, Robert Cohen, Peter Mehlman, Matt Weitzman, Josh Bycel and Jonathan Fener

Voice Cast: John Goodman as Larry, Cheryl Hines as Kate, Orlando Jones as Snack, Carl Reiner as Sarmoti, Danielle Harris as Sierra, David Herman as  Roy, Julian Holloway as Siegfried, Daryl Sabara as Hunter

Ephemeral Waves

 

Hello, security camera! Here is one crime you cannot stop! [lifts shirt] I stole a six pack.

Out of the cancelled shows I have covered, I vividly remember the time this was released, as it was on Sky One in the United Kingdom, but it is interesting to see the show beyond mere memories in its entirety. What the show is in context, a sitcom done in digital animation about a family of white lions, is a lot more deceptive then that merely suggests as a premise. For starters, that this is a DreamWorks Animation production is of note, as where this show's story really begins is arguably 1994, when Steven Spielberg, former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and music executive David Geffen founded the company. Only a few years prior, DreamWorks would have a cultural hit in Shrek (2001), followed by Shrek 2 (2004), so this would have been a time of the company riding high. Also working in television, they decided here to take a sitcom with the same logic, only with a more adult sense of humour, in that you have some big names in the voice cast, and all based on the lives of Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, two German emigrants to the United States who, combining magic with trained wild animals onstage, became staples in Las Vegas. With Siegfried and Roy on as executive producers, Father of the Pride is an irrelevant toned sitcom which follows a pride of lions, as a stereotypical nuclear family, living in the magicians' private zoo "The Secret Garden".

The sitcom archetypes are on full display, matched by the eclectic voice cast. The overweigh, lovable but emotionally clumsy patriarch Larry is the new top lion in the stage shows, perfectly cast by John Goodman, a great actor and a really big figure to cast in a show meant to last. The loving and very patient wife Kate, played by Curb Your Enthusiasm alumni Cheryl Hines; daughter Sierra, played by Danielle Harris, originally a child actress in Halloween 4 (1988) and Halloween 5 (1989), who in a few years from this show would be cast in Rob Zombie's 2007 Halloween film and become a cult genre actress alongside her voice acting work at this period; Daryl Sabara-, of the Spy Kids franchise as Hunter, the sensitive young son more inclined to Lord of the Rings; Orlando Jones as Snack, Larry's best friend and a gopher; and to play to the sitcom trope of in-laws and not getting on with them, Carl Reiner as Sarmoti, Larry's father-in-law who originates from Africa but, with the choice of phrase Reiner uses, is played as a disapproving Jewish father-in-law who, once the top lion and still a chronic womaniser, digs at Larry constantly as a putz.

We will get to Siegfried and Roy themselves for their own paragraph, as staying with the animal cast their narratives take up most of the episodes' short narratives, fully investing in the structure of a sitcom but with the complication of these still being wild animals, even if anthropomorphized and living in houses. Some of the humour of the entire series has aged - too broad, some very politically incorrect, especially all the gay jokes, and some time capsules to the early to mid 2000s, the "Lost Episode" which is rebuilt from the recorded dialogue against sketch board images basing a large part of its narrative around Siegfried and Roy wanting to update their stage show with a giant sexy animatronic of American singer Jessica Simpson. You can even map out when the show was made because of the episode where Donkey from Shrek appears, voiced by Eddie Murphy, interpreted as an actor from the success Shrek films who does car commercials and has a stunt double to accidentally kidnap.

But when the series works, which is most of the time, what on so many levels is a show with too many factors against it being even pleasant to sit through, not even getting into the choice of CGI animation, it is hilarious and a good show. The only time the show ever misses badly, beyond an ill-advised decision to create a new pilot recycling footage from the first, is an episode about Kate, when in election part of the school education system, accidentally making a racist comment against turkeys. As a take on the complex issue of representation, yes, if you take the premise of turkeys as a metaphor, which is a murky, misbegotten tangent to make am episode from even if some jokes within it are funny.

The interesting thing is that the decision to be more mature and adult, in spite of jokes which have aged badly, alongside the voice cast is why the show works, where by the second episode what is the standard joke of the father-in-law moving in progresses to the idea of Larry and Kate picking up a stray drunk zebra in a bar to consider killing, all because she in a fit of rage destroyed her father's precious zebra skin rug and they need a replacement. Jokes throughout admit, despite being civilised, the locals in The Secret Garden could still eat each other, and Larry references having done so in the past, and one episode takes this to an extreme moral choice of whether Larry should let Snack know his new girlfriend has just dumped him or lie and say he ate her. Even without the large list of guest stars alone - Lisa Kudrow as a depressed female panda, Dom DeLuise as one of Sarmoti's poker buddies - the humour really plays off the absurdity of humanising animals, playing the sitcom tropes, but not losing the idea of them being animals, such as the unfinished level even making a plot point Hunter wanting a dog and, his own sentient figure, said dog working out a contract with Larry even if stolen from his original owner.

Sometimes it is proudly silly, such as a lobster (voiced by Danny De Devito) in a fight for his life against Barbara Streisand (not voiced by her), which is why a lot of the show manages to succeed. For everything which does not work, other moments of humour gain a lot either from the writing or the cast, such as the reoccurring gag of an Indian elephant being defensive about the turkey he is living with being just a roommate, or that the white tigers in this world are middle class and the lions are working class.

Stealing the show however is Siegfried and Roy themselves, Siegfried voiced by British actor Julian Holloway, a veteran of old British television and whose filmography includes multiple appearances within the prolific Carry On franchise of sex comedies, whilst Roy is voiced by David Herman, an actor and comedian whose also is a prolific voice actor. Even though they are played, with broad German accents, as buffoons in their own worlds, it is heartening to know the real magicians were executive producers and let this caricature exist, especially as the pair in this series was hilarious and never felt like a mean joke. A pair of pure ids, of energy and passion, who are however alien to the logic of the real world, Siegfried and Roy are always comic foils, even if they influence the narratives, but the bizarre scenarios they are involved in are however always highlights of the episodes. It is always golden, whether an entire episode of them wishing to have a Big Gulp, hijacking a convenience store at night, or Siegfried was exposing his gambling habit in a random attempt at kindness.

I have mentioned the animation only briefly, and at the time, this would have once been good quality 3D animation for television, but this has aged even more than some of the humour has. It does not detract from the show, but you wish in hindsight 2D animation was used. This became prominent with the aforementioned "Lost Episode", included on the DVD release, told in just drawings but showing how dynamic the characters would have been, even the potential for more elaborate onscreen jokes likely to have been possible as one sees, a shady bar for depressed alcoholic magicians which would have not been as inventive in CGI. More than any show, this is a case despite being animated where the non-visual content is the more rewarding part.

So much worked that you could have salvaged the production with another season, with enough virtues found that it would have progressed and improved. The show itself as a production tragically has to live in the shadow of when, in 2003 before the show would premiere a year later, Roy Horn was mauled onstage by one of their tiger, a really gruesome moment of coincidence to have. Father of the Pride however kept going, still given a chance in spite of this incident where thankfully Roy, who also suffered a stroke at the same time, would recover. Ultimately though, even with a real life tragedy that could have led to the show being shelved if it had been worse, this was a case of a show which premiered on a huge hype train which dwindled in interest for viewers.

Out of fourteen episodes made, two were not even shown in the United States, one of them the original version of the pilot, and there was the "Lost Episode" on the DVD. There is a sense of a show which never kept momentum, and in some cases was not well presented. Sadly, the episode never shown in the States, The Siegfried and Roy Fantasy Experience Movie, was one of the funniest Siegfried and Roy subplots, whilst the re-making of the pilot was a waste of resources.  Whilst it is funny in the new footage that, wishing to get Larry a psychiatrist, Siegfried and Roy go to Kelsey Grammer, playing himself, who just played a psychiatrist in a famous show, it is a waste of time in terms of putting it together Frankenstein-like from the original pilot. Altogether, there is a sense of a show that, whilst everything with it works, was just fated not to succeed, which is sad in hindsight to have. Baring one horrible real life incident, there are cases where shows even if they were flawed gems like this one never caught on, and television has a lot of casualties over the decades which merely did not attracted enough attention.