| Archer | |
|---|---|
 Archer promotional title card. |
|
| Genre | Adult animation Comedy |
| Format | Animated series |
| Created by | Adam Reed |
| Voices of | H. Jon Benjamin George Coe Judy Greer Chris Parnell Aisha Tyler Jessica Walter |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 9 (10 planned) (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Adam Reed Matt Thompson |
| Producer(s) | Neal Holman Eric Sims Mack Williams Casey Willis |
| Running time | approx. 22–23 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Floyd County Productions, Radical Axis (animation) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | FX |
| Original run | September 17, 2009 – present |
| External links | |
| Official website | |
Archer is a half-hour animated comedy series created by Adam Reed for the FX network. A sneak peek of the series aired on September 17, 2009.[1] The first season premiered on Thursday January 14, 2010,[2] the show carries a TV-MA rating.
The inspiration behind Archer came to Reed while in a cafe in Salamanca, Spain. Finding himself unable to approach a beautiful woman seated nearby, Reed conjured up the idea of a spy who "would have a perfect line".[3] Reed conceived the show's concept while walking along the Via de la Plata in 2008.[4] Being a longtime "rabid fan" of FX Network and its original programming,[5] he pitched his idea to the network, who accepted it and ordered six episodes, along with an additional four scripts.[5] The show has been renewed for a second season.[6]
Contents |
Set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), suave master spy Sterling Malory Archer deals with global espionage, a domineering, hypersexual, late middle-aged mother/boss Malory Archer, his ex-girlfriend/agent Lana Kane and her ISIS accountant boyfriend Cyril Figgis, and a less-than-masculine code name—"Duchess".[7]
The series itself is comparable to Reed's former shows for Adult Swim, Frisky Dingo and Sealab 2021, in which the series is dialogue driven with rapid-fire dialogue and interaction-based drama. The series also features an anachronistic style: using fashion from the 1960s, technology that is a mix of '80s era computer technology alongside modern technology, and an alternate universe style political status quo in the form of the Soviet Union still being active in the year 2010.
Each episode of Archer takes approximately one month to produce[1] and is animated by three different studios: Reed's Floyd County Productions studio in Atlanta, Georgia,[8] Trinity Animation (backgrounds) in Kansas City,[9] and Radical Axis ("Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and "Squidbillies"), who does a bulk of the show's animation.[10]
The artistic style of the series was designed to be as realistic as possible, so the character designers used as much reference material as they could. In order to create consistency among the separate animators, the artists took photographs of each actor and utilize Adobe Illustrator to trace over them as a base for each actor's character. As Chad Hurd, the lead character designer for the series, noted, the end result resembles "a 1960’s comic book come to life."[11] Stylistically the show is a mix of the 60s and modern cultures. The women and men dress in period 1960s clothes and hair styles (Cyril Figgis wears horn rimmed glasses), the automobiles are of 1960s vintage and the Soviet Union is still the main adversary. However much of the technology is current including cellphones, GPS, high definition video, desktop computers, and DVDs. Numerous plot details arise from contemporary culture for example, a "diversity hire" of African American/Jewish Agent Conway Stern to partially balance out some of the minority agents that were killed off due to Archer's bungling. Another sign of contemporary culture are the sexual harassment complaints personnel could file against each other, an option not available in the 1960s. There are also references to modern pop culture such as Archer calling Karate "The Dane Cook of martial arts", Archer telling Lana she is in the "Danger Zone" as a reference to the Kenny Loggins song from Top Gun, and a sex robot named "Fister Roboto" an obvious parody of the song "Mr. Roboto".[12]
| Name | Character |
|---|---|
| H. Jon Benjamin | Sterling Archer |
| George Coe | Woodhouse |
| Judy Greer | Cheryl/Carol |
| Chris Parnell | Cyril Figgis |
| Aisha Tyler | Lana Kane |
| Jessica Walter | Malory Archer |
| Amber Nash | Pam |
| Lucky Yates | Krieger |
| Adam Reed | Gillette |
On February 22, 2010 the FX Network announced that they had ordered a 13-episode second season of Archer, due to premiere in 2011.[13]
The first two episodes of Archer premiered in the UK on February 25th 2010 on the broadcast channel 'FIVER' and subsequently hosted free to watch on the channel's parent website five.tv.
The first episode premiered in Australia on March 7th, 2010 on Fox8.
Overall the show had generally favorable reviews on Metacritic with a average score of 78 [14]. Entertainment weekly called it a wittily raunchy spy spoof [15] and the Miami Herald referred to it as a millennial (and very much R-rated) "Get Smart" that acerbically and hilariously plays on our post-9/11 fears that "U.S. government intelligence" might be a grim oxymoron [16] .
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