Hey Arnold!
| Hey Arnold! | |
|---|---|
 The main characters of the show. From left to right: Helga, Arnold, and Gerald | |
| Genre | Comedy-drama |
| Format | Animated series |
| Created by | Craig Bartlett |
| Developed by | Craig Bartlett Joe Ansolabehere Steve Viksten |
| Starring | Toran Caudell Phillip Van Dyke Spencer Klein Jamil W. Smith Francesca Marie Smith Justin Shenkarow Christopher P. Walberg Christopher Castile Ben Diskin Sam Gifaldi Anndi McAfee Olivia Hack Dan Castellaneta Tress MacNeille Craig Bartlett Maurice LaMarche |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 5 |
| No. of episodes | 101 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | approx. 22-26 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Snee-Oosh, Inc. Nickelodeon Productions |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Nickelodeon |
| Original run | October 7, 1996 – June 8, 2004 |
| Status | Ended |
Hey Arnold! is an American animated television series created by Craig Bartlett for Nickelodeon. The series aired from October 7, 1996 until June 8, 2004. The show features a fourth grader named Arnold and his friends, and the predicaments they encounter.
Plot
The show stars fourth grader Arnold, a boy who lives with his paternal grandparents, Phil and Gertrude, proprietors of the Sunset Arms boarding house. In each episode, Arnold often helps a schoolmate solve a personal problem, or encounters a predicament of his own. The show also focuses on Arnold's classmate, Helga, who often treats Arnold cruelly and bullies him constantly. However, a recurring theme of the show is the fact that Helga pretends to dislike Arnold to hide the fact that she is secretly in love with him.
Many episodes involve urban legends, often told by Arnold's best friend, Gerald. These episodes often feature over-the-top events such as those that involve superheroes or headless horsemen, among others.
Setting
Hey Arnold! takes place in the fictional American city of Hillwood. Craig Bartlett stated in an interview that the city on the show is based on large northern cities, including Seattle (his hometown), Portland, Oregon (where he went to art school) and New York City (from which many landmarks were borrowed), also with references to Nashville, TN Grand Ole Opry. Bartlett, having grown up in Seattle, bases many of the show's events on his own experience growing up in the city. The Pig War mentioned in the episode with the same title took place on the boundary between what is now the State of Washington and British Columbia.
Production
Hey Arnold! was created by Craig Bartlett and is based on his comics starring Arnold, which he created in 1986. The familiar, cel-animated Arnold came about in the mid-1990s when Nickelodeon picked up the new series. Apart from the animation style, Nick's Arnold now wears a sweater, with his plaid shirt untucked (resembling a kilt). Only Arnold's cap remains from his original clay-animation wardrobe. "Arnold" comic strips also appeared in Simpsons Illustrated magazine (Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, is Craig Bartlett's brother-in-law.). Hey Arnold! was pitched to Nickelodeon in the fall of 1993, a pilot was produced in the spring of 1994, and the series was greenlit in January 1995. Hey Arnold! was in production continuously from 1995 to 2001, culminating in a TV movie originally titled "Arnold Saves the Neighborhood", but which Nickelodeon decided to release theatrically as Hey Arnold!: The Movie, in June 2002. Production of Hey Arnold! wrapped in May 2001.
Hey Arnold! debuted as an animated short for the Nickelodeon film Harriet the Spy in 1996.
The show also aired on "Nick on CBS" from 2002 up until September 2004.
A film was planned in which Arnold searches for his lost parents, but it was abandoned after Craig Bartlett left Hey Arnold! for a new project.
Characters
Main voice cast
Episodes
Feature film
In this 2002 theatrical feature film, Arnold, Helga and Gerald set out on their quest to save their old neighborhood from a greedy developer who plans on converting it into a huge shopping mall. This film was directed by Tuck Tucker, and features the voice talents of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Sorvino, and Christopher Lloyd.
DVD and digital releases
Amazon.com released the first two seasons on DVD through its CreateSpace program in August 2008. The remaining seasons were released in later months. The DVDs are sold as "burn on demand" items. Some episodes have also been released on iTunes as well as Netflix.
References
External links
- Hey Arnold! at the Internet Movie Database
- Hey Arnold! at TV.com
- Hey Arnold! at the Big Cartoon DataBase
Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Arnold!
