After an impressive 13-season run, FOX’s animated family comedy King of the Hill is apparently ending its run on the network. Daily Variety reports that the show’s producers will wrap production at the end of the current season. Fans, however, can take the news with a grain of salt since FOX canceled the series once before, only to pick it back up for two more seasons.
Created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, King of the Hill debuted in 1997 and has become one of the longest-running animated primetime series, second only to FOX’s The Simpsons. The shows are also the longest-running comedies in TV history.
King of the Hill became a hit with Sunday-night viewers by presenting a more realistic depiction of a middle-class family than previously seen in animation. Judge lends his voice to propane salesman and family man Hank Hill, who lives in a Texas suburb with wife Peggy (Kathy Najimy) and son Bobby (Pamela Adlon). Though the show could have easily been made in live-action, its characters manage to come across as being more real than those in most sit-coms starring live actors.
Family Guy and Futurama are proof that animated FOX shows are hard to kill. The former was brought back to life years after its cancellation and is now one of the network’s highest-rated programs. Futurama has returned as a series of direct-to-video features that later air on Comedy Central. There’s a good chance that King of the Hill may also come back in one form or another if DVD sales are brisk enough to demonstrate a demand for more back-alley beers with Hank and the gang.
