Bart's creator takes warped factor into the future

By Greg Dixon

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Matt Groening drew himself into a corner with The Simpsons.

With his first act of television, he created the definitive hard act to follow by firstly flicking the rule book in the shredder and then reformulating animation and situation comedy into a cutting-edge vehicle for satirising society, pop culture, television, the family, politics, business ... well, you get the picture.

So how best to better an icon?

Perhaps you simply redraw it. Certainly Groening's second act of television, the animated sci-fi sit-com Futurama (TV2, last night) set 1000 years hence, has much the same chassis as its progenitor.

It takes the basic framework of The Simpsons' dysfunctional blood family, with all it's prefabricated lunacy, and recasts it as a trio of unrelated outsiders who, no matter much they wind each other up, have nobody else to call family.

As well, Futurama's character-isations have a sniff of the familiar.

There's Fry, the 20th-century pizza delivery boy cryogenically revived in 2999, who might well be a 20-something Bart, or perhaps a brother of Homer the hopeless. Then there is Bender, the light- fingered, dipso robot who could be a foul-mouthed Barney. And finally there is Leela, an alien, martial-arts cyclops with the wit of Lisa, the practicality of Marge, and the gung-ho temperament of Aliens' Ripley (though apparently she's based on Xena).

As a trinity of traits, they bring exactly the same combination of neurotic stupidity and unexpected wisdom as The Simpsons family of four have done for 10 triumphant years.

But if Groening has stuck to his own rule-book for success in framing his new series, he's retained all those other essential elements which make The Simpsons such satisfying, multi-layered entertainment.

There's the surface slapstick and profanity,of course, but there is also the cunningly crafted pokes at society, pop culture, television, the family ... well, you got the picture the first time.

Then there are the little incidental details like the pizza box dictum "Do not tip delivery boy" or the workers' slogan "You gotta do what you gotta do" - which give proceedings a three-dimensional richness that's so often missing from television (it is such similar minutiae that makes The Simpsons such a must-see on re-run; they're often missed on first viewing).

But Futurama has some way to go before it will enter, if it ever does, our collective subconscious in the way its forerunner has, though that may only a matter of time or perhaps a question of familiarity.

Certainly last night's first episode, with its Simpsons-esque moments of pure, unalloyed genius of invention, give cause for confidence.

From the clever, 3D title sequence (indeed the whole pro-duction is more lavishly drawn that its predecessor) to the just plain hilarious suicide booth "Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favourite suicide booth since 2008," this is already better than at least 90 per cent of what our networks screen.

But then you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work that out either.