Tuesday 29 July 2014

Dog City

Today we have the adventures of a cartoon canine detective, and his creator (who is also a dog) in Jim Henson's Dog City!




Dog City centers on Eliot Shag, a Muppet dog and animator, and his cartoon creation Ace Hart, an animated canine private eye. In each episode, Eliot translates his own dilemmas into Ace's more adventurous exploits in the tough, 1940s-style streets of Dog City. The Muppet sequences featured, in addition to Eliot, his admiring young neighbor Artie Springer, building superintendent Bruno, his assistant Bowser, and girlfriend Colleen Barker. Eliot, Bruno, and Bowser were all refurbished puppets, with new taxidermy eyes, from the original Dog City special, and Colleen recycled the same puppet, name, and voice.
The animated segments, meanwhile, maintained the film noir-spoof atmosphere of the original special, with hero Ace Hart, private eye dog, battling gangster Bugsy Vile and his gang, with the assistance of Eddie the newspup and the help or hindrance of by-the-book Chief Rosie O'Gravy, all of whom had counterparts in the puppet segments. Each episode thus had roughly parallel plots running between the Muppets and the cartoon characters, with creator Eliot and creation Ace engaging in good-natured arguments about the storylines.


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