PBS: Arthur

February 15, 2009 10:50 PM

Despite being a kid's show on PBS, Marc Brown's Arthur series is still the favorite of many older viewers for its elaborate parodies and references to things like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Law and Order, Harry Potter, and even South Park.

Wicho262 is busy posting episodes on Youtube, while some misguided fans attempt to create an Arthur of their own...
posted by mmmleaf (17 comments total)

"The purple orange: my hideous child which has no rhyme!" Lol. Best 6 minutes I've ever spent wasted and not sleeping. Thank you!
posted by christhelongtimelurker at 11:03 PM on February 15, 2009

This is a really cute show. I liked the episode where Art Garfunkel followed the gang around Elmwood City like a wandering troubadour. I mean, it was creepy, but it was good.

I used to love the Arthur books when I was a kid, and it's nice that one of the PBS book-series-to-tv-series is actually good. Those Clifford and Curious George shows really ruined the books for me. I doubt I'll be able to read them again now.
posted by Mael Oui at 11:06 PM on February 15, 2009

Plus theme song by Ziggy Marley!
posted by clerestory at 12:04 AM on February 16, 2009

Arthur gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Really.

That's all I've got.
posted by Roman Graves at 12:58 AM on February 16, 2009

Yeah, a nice TV show; gentle, intelligent, amusing, for parents almost as much as children. (The South Park parody was pushing it a bit for a presumed audience of 8-year-olds, though, wasn't it?)

One perennial source of amusement is wondering what animal Arthur really is. He's no aardvark, whatever they say. Some kind of kinkajou?
posted by Phanx at 2:12 AM on February 16, 2009

One perennial source of amusement is wondering what animal Arthur really is. He's no aardvark, whatever they say. Some kind of kinkajou?

I like how they lampshade that in The Contest episode.
posted by ShawnStruck at 5:27 AM on February 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

He's an aardvark; I know because there was an episode that showed "prehistoric people" including Arthur's family imagined as prehistoric, and they had long snouts and aardvark ears. Which made me laugh.
posted by emjaybee at 6:44 AM on February 16, 2009

Owing to its origins at WGBH, Boston's PBS affiliate, there was an episode in 2004 or early 2005 featuring a few members of the World Champion Red Sox in animal form. AIRC, Johnny Damon and Mike Timlin were two of them and the real players lent their voices to the episode.
posted by LilBucner at 7:51 AM on February 16, 2009

awesome british kids tv
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:13 AM on February 16, 2009

Plus Arthur gave us the awesome library card song.
posted by Biblio at 8:25 AM on February 16, 2009

I went to a reading by Marc Brown a few years ago. He's exactly as Phanxs describes: " gentle, intelligent, amusing, for parents almost as much as children." He did some drawings as he spoke, then at the end of the talk he started handing them out to the crowd. Some greedy parents started grabbing, and Brown got this really panicked look on his face and was ushered out very quickly.
posted by MrMoonPie at 9:03 AM on February 16, 2009

My favorite is the bad word episode
posted by melissam at 1:22 PM on February 16, 2009

Plenty of (official, less like to get taken down) Arthur videos at PBS Kids Video
posted by gwint at 2:19 PM on February 16, 2009

I still occasionally say "I'll NEVER get to see the outskirts of town!" (about 2:25-2:40 in or so for context).
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 5:22 PM on February 16, 2009

Arthur is great.

EOT
posted by DU at 6:24 PM on February 16, 2009

Wow ... some of those fanfic summaries were kind of frightening!

I love this show.
posted by starfyr at 7:01 PM on February 16, 2009

My favorite episode was the one with Taj Mahal.
But then again the Jack Prelutsky episode was really good as well.
posted by Sailormom at 7:28 PM on February 16, 2009