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Dinosaurs

Comedy Series

About This Show

From Wikipedia:

Dinosaurs is an American family sitcom that was originally broadcast on ABC from April 26, 1991 to July 20, 1994. The show, about a family of anthropomorphic dinosaurs, was produced by Michael Jacobs Productions and Jim Henson Television in association with Walt Disney Television and Buena Vista Television.

Origins

News stories written at the time of the show's premiere highlighted Dinosaurs' connection to Jim Henson, who had died the year before. "Jim Henson dreamed up the show's basic concept about three years ago," said a New York Times article in April 1991. "'He wanted it to be a sitcom with a pretty standard structure, with the biggest differences being that it's a family of dinosaurs and their society has this strange toxic life style,' said [his son] Brian Henson. But until The Simpsons took off, said Alex Rockwell, a vice president of the Henson organization, 'people thought it was a crazy idea.'"

In the late 1980s, Jim Henson had worked with illustrator/designer William Stout on a feature film starring animatronic dinosaurs with the working title of The Natural History Project; a 1993 article in The New Yorker said that Henson continued to work on a dinosaur project (presumably the Dinosaurs concept) until the "last months of his life."

The television division of the Walt Disney Company began working on the series in 1990 for CBS before the series landed on ABC.

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People Who Talked About This Show

  • Kevin Clash
  • Reza Badiyi

Featured Content

Video: Opening of Dinosaurs from YouTube

Resources

Links:

DVD: Dinosaurs: The Complete First and Second Seasons

IMDb entry on Dinosaurs

Wikipedia entry on Dinosaurs

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People Talking About This Show

  • Reza Badiyi
    • Reza Badiyi on enjoying his experience directing  Dinosaurs (02m 56s)
  • Kevin Clash
    • Puppeteer Kevin Clash on Dinosaurs and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the technology used on these series (02m 54s)
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