This Is America, Charlie Brown

This Is America, Charlie Brown
Genre
  • Documentary
  • Animated television special
  • Adventure
  • Comedy
  • Drama
  • Historical
  • Family
Created byCharles M. Schulz
Written by
Directed byBill Melendez
Sam Jaimes
Evert Brown
Sam Nicholson
Starring
  • Erin Chase
  • Jason Riffle
  • Erica Gayle
  • Ami Foster
  • Brittany M. Thornton
  • Christina Lange
  • Brandon Stewart
  • Jeremy Miller
  • Jason Muller
  • Marie Cole
  • Tani Taylor Powers
  • Keri Houlihan
  • Curtis Andersen
  • Hakeem Abdul-Samad
  • Grant Gelt
  • Bill Melendez
Theme music composer
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes8
Production
ProducersLee Mendelson
Bill Melendez
CinematographyNick Vasu
EditorsGordon D. Brenner
Chuck McCann
Warren Taylor
Running time25 minutes
Production companies
Original release
NetworkCBS
ReleaseOctober 21, 1988 (1988-10-21) –
May 23, 1989 (1989-05-23)
Related
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This Is America, Charlie Brown is an eight-part animated television miniseries that depicts a series of events in American history featuring characters from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. It aired from 1988 to 1989 on CBS.[1] The first four episodes aired as a weekly series in October and November 1988; the final four episodes aired monthly from February to May 1989.[2]

Due to the nature of the events portrayed and the historical figures included — such as the Wright Brothers and George Washington — the opposite of most Charlie Brown cartoons, many adults were shown in full view along with the Peanuts gang, something that happened rarely in the animated films and specials and in only one early sequence in the comic strip.[3] These adults were drawn in a style similar to It's Only a Game, another comic strip by Schulz that featured adults, as well other productions that were overseen by Peanuts regular Bill Melendez.

While all eight episodes were subsequently rerun by CBS in the summer of 1990, the series as a whole subsequently aired in the U.S. on Disney Channel between 1993 and 1997, which gave way to Nickelodeon between 1998 and 2003. However, "The Mayflower Voyagers" episode returned to television in 2008 (and aired each year through 2019, after which the Peanuts television specials migrated over to the Apple TV+ streaming platform) as companion material to pad the 1973 special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving to a full one-hour time slot. To accommodate the slot, portions of the episode were abridged.

  1. ^ Perlmutter, David (2018). The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 638. ISBN 978-1538103739.
  2. ^ Terrace, Vincent (2013). Television Specials: 5,336 Entertainment Programs, 1936-2012 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Co. p. 92. ISBN 9780786474448.
  3. ^ Erickson, Hal (2005). Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Co. pp. 843–844. ISBN 978-1476665993.