Given the option to choose between British imports, I’d take Bob and Margaret over fancy biscuits and expensive tea, any day. Bob and Margaret challenge Homer and Marge Simpson as the best contemporary cartoon couple on television and video today. Holiday is the sixth volume in a series of videos based on the animated television series that goes by the name of its two lead characters. This tape contains two episodes: Holiday and Trick or Treat.
In the first episode, we find the red-nosed couple going on a vacation. Bob is paranoid they’ll miss their plane, Margaret is paranoid that Bob won’t be quiet, and their two dogs are put in a kennel whose owner is just plain paranoid. In Trick or Treat, Bob goes to the funeral of an old school friend who died after a fall from his roof. The problem is that Bob doesn’t remember who this friend was. This causes Bob to ponder such important things as death and life insurance and the light at the end of the tunnel.
Bob and Margaret are great. Their problems could just as well have come from the stacks of photo albums that hide under living-room coffee tables all over the world. This might be the most believable cartoon ever made. The crude drawing does not make Bob and Margaret look real, but that’s all right, because it puts your focus on the real-life stories and hilarious one-liners.
The creation of Allison Snowden and David Fine, Bob and Margaret was spun off from Bob’s Birthday, the winner for best animated-short at the 1995 Academy Awards. In 1998, three years after their Oscar-night victory, Snowden and Fine let Bob and Margaret loose on the television airwaves.
In a time where adult-oriented cartoons are saturating television programming and on video store shelves, Bob and Margaret stands above the crowd. Much of the humor comes out of nowhere, but it’s successful because it makes sense. Some moments are so funny that you want more and when a new joke isn’t fed immediately you start to look at your watch. But, just as you figure out the long hand from the short hand, you’re laughing again. This relatively slow pacing is the only blemish on an otherwise great show.
Please note that Bob and Margaret is geared toward an adult audience and is not intended for children.
