Jan's Funny Tales (2007 Australian TV series)

Jan's Funny Tales is an Australian animated television series which premiered on ABC and the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company on 8 October 2007 until 25 August 2014. The program was created by Will Harland, Clarence Keaton, Joe Brumm, and Andrey Kubliv and it was produced by Plexibay Productions and Queensland-based company Anthro Studio. It was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, with Plexibay Productions holding global distribution and merchandising rights.

Despite being a series aimed for older children and teenagers between the ages of 7 and 16, the show is disguised as a preschool children's series and centers on a 11 year old girl named Jan, as she plays and learns with her friends in a magical apartment building. The show is best known for its episodes dealing with topics that aren't usually appropriate for an ordinary preschool show. As well as the animated adventures of Jan and her friends, the series uses traditionally animated footage from the 2001 American television series Yearly Adventures for various segments. A total of 118 episodes were produced for the fist two seasons alone.

Overview
Jan is a 11 year old girl who loves using her imagination. Each day, she goes from her apartment unit when her parents are away to the one next door to play with her magical friends: Craig, the crayon; Skeeter, the roller skate; Charlie and David, a set of chicken twins; a group of Siamese twin turkeys; and flat owner Aunt Chillary. Through their adventures in each episode, they learn good lessons that help them overcome their problems. Tied into each story are other segments, told through animated footage:


 * Through an anthropomorphic CCTV system known as Harold, the characters look out beyond the apartment building to see what the Monty family are doing. Their stories relate to the situations of the main characters. The Monty family footage consists of additional animation, taken from the American television series Yearly Adventures (see below for more information).
 * Some episodes include a segment called 'Refection Time'. These consist of Jan telling a short story about events she had been though that have similarities to what the Monty family experienced and then she ends the story with a moral which relates the lesson of the episode.

Voice cast

 * Tara Strong as Jan and April
 * David Tennant as Charlie the Chicken
 * Chris Pratt as David the Chicken and Mr. Anton Peterson
 * Sophie Aldred as
 * January Monty
 * November Monty
 * Melanie Swiningham
 * July Monty
 * and Aunt Chillary
 * Julie Johnson as
 * Skeeter the Roller Skate
 * May Monty
 * December Monty
 * Giselle Swiningham
 * Angel
 * Dave Thompson as
 * Father Time
 * Anderson Ferret
 * Pain
 * Bradley Walsh as
 * October Monty
 * Mike
 * and Thomas
 * James Arnold Taylor as March Monty
 * J.P. Manoux as June Monty
 * Josh Keaton as August Monty
 * Grey DeLisle as February Monty

Broadcast
In October 2019, Jan's Funny Tales debuted in New Zealand, airing on TVNZ 2. The first series made its Australian pay-TV premiere on ABC on 5 March 2008. It made its free-to-air television debut on Channel 4 on 4 May 2008 in the United Kingdom. In June 2007, the international broadcasting rights to Jan's Funny Tales were acquired by Discovery, Inc., with plans to premiere on the Discovery Channel television network from late 2008. The series premiered on Disney XD and Cartoon Network in the United States on 9 September 2009. The series notably features the original voice actors while airing overseas, albeit with redone lines to fit local accents. The second season debuted on Cartoon Network in the United States from 10 July 2010 until 14 August 2012.

Controversy
Jan's Funny Tales went viral in 2015 as the show started to draw severe negative reactions from the older set, who mocked the title character in popular culture through song parodies and comedy routines such as being beaten up by Dwayne Johnson on a Saturday Night Live episode. Jan leaving an apartment unit alone in each episode was seen by many parents as unsafe and her voice is also considered by some to be annoying due to it being high pitched. Whereas Jan's Funny Tales was especially popular during initial airings, the "anti-Jan" phenomenon became most ubiquitous in Russia by 2017, where the show soon became abhorred for it's innuendo packed episodes that seem to initially be appropriate for a typical preschool series but gradually revealed hidden themes that were deemed inappropriate for young children.

Production
The show was first conceived by Will Harland in 2003, five years before the production of Teletubbies In Tubbyopolis, which itself came from a period of discussion with Herbert Stone for children's show ideas. Also Harland saw the potential of adapting Yearly Adventures into a preschool spinoff series for PBS, but it was ultimately pushed aside because he was not able to get the rights to the show.

As a result of this, Harland saw fit to use the series' animation as a part of a new television show, licensing the use of the footage from McCracken: however, they repurposed the footage drastically to suit the preschool demographic. (McCracken was not involved in the show's production; however, he was credited as the creator of the additional animated footage.)

Comparisons with Yearly Adventures
The segments featuring the Monty family used footage from the American television series Yearly Adventures, a series produced by Craig McCracken that aired from 2001 until 2009. Harland had saw the potential of adapting Yearly Adventures into a preschool series, but he ultimately was unable to get the rights to the show. He instead repurposed footage from the show drastically to suit the needs of his brand new show called Jan's Funny Tales.

The original episodes of Yearly Adventures centered on an alternate Earth where months, holidays and other time and date-related attributes are humanoids who live in peace with normal humans, with its plotlines containing themes intended for a teenage audience. Due to the difference in the intended demographic, the original plotlines were not used. Instead, the producers of Jan's Funny Tales wrote entirely new stories of the months that were set within a new setting that related to the theme of the main animated segment, with footage from Yearly Adventures edited and redubbed to tell these stories.

Along with the newly created stories, various changes were made to the characters featured in them. The characters of May and February were made female, while characters such as March, June, and August remained male.

Some character names were also changed, usually to avoid confusion with others of the same name: Of the main characters, Death became 'Pain'; Cupid became 'Angel'; while Phoebe Moon became 'Gabby Snot'.

Despite these changes, the show "matured" over time and became more directly aimed at older children and teenagers.