Hoggy Porkman, Attorney At Law

Hoggy Porkman, Attorney at Law is an American animated courtroom black comedy series created by Michael Ouweleen and Erik Richter and produced by Universal Cartoon Studios, in association with Sony Pictures Television for Spike TV. The show revolves around the activity of the Warlus & Warlus law firm, which is staffed mainly by various characters who had originally been featured in past Universal cartoons, most notably Porkman and the Pig Galaxy Trio.

The Hoggy Porkman pilot first aired on The WB on December 30, 2000. On September 2, 2001, the series moved to Spike TV, continuing for four seasons and 39 episodes before ending on July 22, 2007. Many of the episodes ran for 22 minutes, in order to fit in a half-hour timeslot.

Premise
Hoggy Porkman, Attorney at Law features ex-superhero Hoggy Porkman as an attorney working for a law firm alongside other cartoon stars from any Universal cartoon series. Similarly, Hoggy's clients are also primarily composed of characters taken from various cartoon series of the same era. Many of Porkman's nemeses featured in his former cartoon series also became attorneys, often representing the opposing side of a given case.

Hoggy usually fills the role of a criminal defense attorney, though he will act as a civil litigator or other such job when the plot calls for it. The series uses a surrealist style of comedy, featuring characters, objects, and jokes that are briefly introduced and rarely (if ever) referenced thereafter. Also, because the series relied heavily on popular culture references to classic television animation, Hoggy Porkman, Attorney at Law constantly delves into parody, even featuring clips of these series or specially-created scenes which mimic the distinctive style of the animation being referenced.

Instead of rigid plot structure, much of the humor is derived from the fact that superheroes and supervillains are given more realistic and human qualities, such as a mad scientist named Dr. Catducktor, who becomes a paranoid prosecutor. Also, several of the plots revolve around the popular myths about classic Universal characters, such as Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda being alcoholics and Chilly Willy being a stalker.

Production
Although the first season was animated using hand-drawn animation and digital ink-and-paint, the remaining seasons were animated using Adobe After Effects. The reason for the switch was that the animation studio, AKOM Production Company, was having difficulty maintaining the fast pace of the show, and thus the production of episodes slowed down due to constant retakes.

By animating the later episodes at Universal Cartoon Studios in-house with Adobe Flash, not only were problems corrected more quickly, but production costs were much lower. Some animation was also done for the show at Bardel Entertainment in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Voice actors

 * Stephen Colbert: Hoggy Porkman
 * Dan Castellaneta: Earthworm Jim
 * Jeff Bennett: Peter Puppy, Additional Voices
 * Jim Cummings: Psy-Crow, Additional Voices
 * Edward Hibbert: Evil the Cat
 * John Kassir: Snott, Henchrat, Additional Voices
 * Billy West: Woody Woodpecker
 * Tress MacNeille: Andy Panda
 * Mark Hamill: Buzz Buzzard
 * Michael Bell: Additional Voices
 * Frank Welker: Additional Voices
 * Danny Goldman: Dr. Catducktor
 * Malachi Pearson: Casper the Friendly Ghost
 * Lucille Bliss: Fairy Princess

Episodes
List of Hoggy Porkman, Attorney at Law episodes

Reception
Hoggy Porkman, Attorney at Law was named the 91st best animated series by IGN. They compared it to Space Ghost Coast to Coast, a show that is also based on an old cartoon, in this case on a Hanna-Barbera one, and described it as a clever show.

DVD releases
Each DVD is in the shape of a law book. Each season's box art is nearly identical, and the only change for each season is the background color (Volume 1 is brown-purple, Volume 2 is blue, and Volume 3 is black). The small picture next to the title and the title itself also appear different.

Music
The theme song is an edited version of the song "Slow Moody Blues" written by Reg Tilsley. Other notable songs used in the show include Charlie Steinman's "It Is Such A Good Night" (AKA "Scoobidoo Love") and a lyricless version of Gianni Morandi's "La Mia Mania" (AKA "Okay Maria").

Video game
Main article: Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (video game)

A video game based on the series has been released for the PlayStation 2,[6] Wii[7] and PlayStation Portable[8] video game consoles. It was developed by High Voltage Software and published by Capcom, with gameplay mechanics similar to Capcom's Ace Attorney series. It was released on January 8, 2008.

Trivia

 * Danny Goldman used the same voice he uses for Brainy Smurf (The Smurfs) for the role of Dr. Catducktor.