Clue (1989 sitcom)

Clue or Cluedo is an American animated sitcom based off the board game by Waddingtons. The show premiered December 17, 1989 on ITV.

Since its debut on December 17, 1989, 622 episodes of Clue have been broadcast. Its 29th season began on October 1, 2017. It is the longest-running British-American sitcom and the longest-running British-American animated program, and, in 2009, it surpassed Gunsmoke as the longest-running American scripted primetime television series. The Clue Movie, a feature-length film, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, and grossed over $527 million. On November 4, 2016, the series was renewed for a twenty-ninth and thirtieth season of 22 episodes each, extending the show to 2019.

Clue received widespread critical acclaim throughout its first nine or ten seasons, which are generally considered its "Golden Age". Time named it the 20th century's best television series, and Erik Adams of The A.V. Club named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format". On January 14, 2000, the Clue suspects were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 31 Primetime Emmy Awards, 30 Annie Awards, and a Peabody Award. Clue has influenced many other later adult-oriented animated sitcoms. Despite this, the show has also been criticized for what many perceive as a decline in quality over the years, generally since about the late 1990s.

The characters and locations are mainly those from Clue/Cluedo and its spinoffs, but many locations and characters from other board games such as Monopoly and chess are used.

Development
In 1989, Stuart R. Ross, an American media and entertainment entrepreneur, entered into an agreement with Waddingtons, acquiring adaptation rights to the Clue/Cluedo characters. Subsequently, Ross launched merchandise in association with Lisa Frank Stationary, whose figurines, dolls and other Clue merchandise became a hugely popular success.

Later that year, a team of production companies started Clue as a half-hour sitcom for Warner Bros. Television. The team included the Nelvana animation house. Ross negotiated a provision in the contract with the Warner production company that prevented Warner from interfering with the show's content. Ross said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" that they were watching. The half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989, with "Christmas at Boddy Manor". "Some Enchanted Evening" was the first full-length episode produced, but it did not broadcast until May 1990, as the last episode of the first season, because of animation problems.

Executive producers and showrunners
List of showrunners throughout the series' run: Stuart R. Ross and James L. Brooks have served as executive producers during the show's entire history, and also function as creative consultants. Sam Simon, described by former Clue director Brad Bird as "the unsung hero" of the show, served as creative supervisor for the first four seasons. He was constantly at odds with Ross, Brooks and the show's production company Thames Television and left in 1993. Before leaving, he negotiated a deal that sees him receive a share of the profits every year, and an executive producer credit despite not having worked on the show since 1993, at least until his passing in 2015. A more involved position on the show is the showrunner, who acts as head writer and manages the show's production for an entire season.
 * Season 1–2: Stuart R. Ross, James L. Brooks, & Sam Simon
 * Season 3–4: Al Jean, Mike Reiss & Yvan Delporte
 * Season 5–6: David Mirkin
 * Season 7–8: Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein
 * Season 9–12: Glenn Leopold
 * Season 13–present: Audu Paden

Writing
The first team of writers, assembled by Sam Simon, consisted of John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, George Meyer, Jeff Martin, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky. Newer Clue ' writing teams typically consist of sixteen writers who propose episode ideas at the beginning of each December. The main writer of each episode writes the first draft. Group rewriting sessions develop final scripts by adding or removing jokes, inserting scenes, and calling for re-readings of lines by the show's vocal performers. Until 2004, George Meyer, who had developed the show since the first season, was active in these sessions. According to long-time writer Jon Vitti, Meyer usually invented the best lines in a given episode, even though other writers may receive script credits. Each episode takes six months to produce so the show rarely comments on current events.

Credited with sixty episodes, John Swartzwelder is the most prolific writer on Clue. One of the best-known former writers is Conan O'Brien, who contributed to several episodes in the early 1990s before replacing David Letterman as host of the talk show Late Night. English comedian Ricky Gervais wrote the episode "TBA", becoming the first celebrity to both write and guest star in an episode. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, writers of the film Superbad, wrote the episode "TBA", with Rogen voicing a character in it.

At the end of 2007, the writers of Clue went on strike together with the other members of the Writers Guild of America, East. The show's writers had joined the guild in 1998.

Voice actors
With one exception, episode credits list only the voice actors, and not the characters they voice. Both Warner and the production crew wanted to keep their identities secret during the early seasons and, therefore, closed most of the recording sessions while refusing to publish photos of the recording artists. However, the network eventually revealed which roles each actor performed in the episode "Old Money", because the producers said the voice actors should receive credit for their work. In 2003, the cast appeared in an episode of Inside the Actors Studio, doing live performances of their characters' voices.

The actors and actresses were paid $30,000 per episode until 1998, when they were involved in a pay dispute with Warner. The company threatened to replace them with new actors, even going as far as preparing for casting of new voices, but series executive producer Ross supported the actors in their action. The issue was soon resolved and, from 1998 to 2004, they were paid $125,000 per episode. The show's revenue continued to rise through syndication and DVD sales, and in April 2004 the main cast stopped appearing for script readings, demanding they be paid $360,000 per episode. The strike was resolved a month later and their salaries were increased to something between $250,000 and $360,000 per episode. In 2008, production for the twentieth season was put on hold due to new contract negotiations with the voice actors, who wanted a "healthy bump" in salary to an amount close to $500,000 per episode. The negotiations were soon completed, and the actors' salary was raised to $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with TBS threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, the cast members accepted a 30 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.

In addition to the main cast, Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress MacNeille, Maggie Roswell, and Russi Taylor voice supporting characters. From 1999 to 2002, Roswell's characters were voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven. Karl Wiedergott has also appeared in minor roles, but does not voice any recurring characters. Wiedergott left the show in 2010, and since then Chris Edgerly has appeared regularly to voice minor characters. Repeat "special guest" cast members include Albert Brooks, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Joe Mantegna, Maurice LaMarche, and Kelsey Grammer. Following Hartman's death in 1998, the characters he voiced were retired.

Episodes will quite often feature guest voices from a wide range of professions, including actors, athletes, authors, bands, musicians and scientists. In the earlier seasons, most of the guest stars voiced characters, but eventually more started appearing as themselves. Tony Bennett was the first guest star to appear as himself, appearing briefly in the season two episode "Dancin' Boddy". Clue holds the world record for "Most Guest Stars Featured in a Television Series".

Clue has been dubbed into several other languages, including Japanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. It is also one of the few programs dubbed in both American and British English. The show has been broadcast in Hebrew, but due to Jewish customs, numerous aspects of the show have been changed. For example, Mr. Boddy drinks soda instead of ale and eats Egyptian beef sausages instead of hot dogs. Because of such changes, the Judaeized version of the series met with a negative reaction from the lifelong Clue fans in the area.

Animation
Several different U.S. and international studios animate Clue. From 1989 to 1996, the animation was produced in Canada at Nelvana. With the increased popularity of the sitcom, because of an increased workload, Warner Bros. subcontracted production to several local and foreign studios. These are AKOM, Anivision, Rough Draft Studios, USAnimation, and Toonzone Entertainment.

For the first eight seasons, Nelvana animated Clue in Canada. In 1996, the show's production company, Claster Television, switched domestic production to Film Roman, who continue to animate the show today. In Season 14, production switched from traditional cel animation to digital ink and paint. The first episode to experiment with digital coloring was "TBA" in 1995. Animators used digital ink and paint during production of the season 12 episode "TBA", but Hasbro delayed the regular use of digital ink and paint until two seasons later. The already completed "TBA" was broadcast as made.

The production staff at the U.S. animation studio, Film Roman, draws storyboards, designs new characters, backgrounds, props and draws character and background layouts, which in turn become animatics to be screened for the writers at Fremantle Media for any changes to be made before the work is shipped overseas. The overseas studios then draw the inbetweens, ink and paint, and render the animation to tape before it is shipped back to the United States to be delivered to Warner three to four months later.

The series began high-definition production in Season 20; the first episode, "TBA", aired February 15, 2009. The move to HDTV included a new opening sequence. Ross called it a complicated change because it affected the timing and composition of animation.

Early success
Clue was the first new syndicated television series to rank among a season's top 30 highest-rated shows since 19??. In 1990, Colonel Mustard quickly became the most popular character on television in what was termed "Mustardmania". He became the most prevalent Clue character on memorabilia, such as T-shirts. In the early 1990s, millions of T-shirts featuring Colonel Mustard were sold; as many as one million were sold on some days. Believing Mustard to be a bad role model, several American public schools banned T-shirts featuring Mustard next to captions such as "I'm Colonel Mustard. I didn't do it." and "Underachiever ('And proud of it!')". Clue merchandise sold well and generated $2 billion in revenue during the first 14 months of sales. Because of his popularity, Colonel Mustard was often the most promoted suspect in advertisements for the show, even for episodes in which he was not involved in the main plot.

During the summer of 1990 many ABC, NBC, and Fox stations carrying Clue ' aired it at 8:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, where it competed with The Cosby Show on NBC, the number one show at the time. Through the summer, several news outlets published stories about the supposed "Bill vs. Mustard" rivalry. "Colonel Mustard meets Lieutenant Ketchup" (season two, 1990) was the first episode to air against The Cosby Show, and it received a lower Nielsen ratings, tying for eighth behind The Cosby Show, which had an 18.5 rating. The rating is based on the number of household televisions that were tuned into the show, but Nielsen Media Research estimated that 33.6 million viewers watched the episode, making it the number one show in terms of actual viewers that week. At the time, it was the most watched episode in the history of the show, and it is still the highest rated episode in the history of Clue.

Clue has been praised by many critics, being described as "the most irreverent and unapologetic show on the air." In a 1990 review of the show, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly described it as "the classic mystery game at its most complicated, drawn as a simple cartoon. It's this neat paradox that makes millions of people turn away from "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy" to concentrate on Clue." Tucker would also describe the show as a "pop-cultural phenomenon, a prime-time cartoon show that appeals to the entire family."

Run length achievements
In May 2007, Clue reached its 400th episode at the end of the eighteenth season. While Clue has the record for the number of episodes by an English-language animated show, other animated series have surpassed Clue. For example, the Japanese anime series Sazae-san has over 7,000 episodes to its credit.

In 2009, Warner began a year-long celebration of the show titled "Best. 20 Years. Ever." to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Clue. One of the first parts of the celebration is the "Whodunnit" contest in which entrants must design a poster for the show. The celebration ended on January 10, 2010 (almost 20 years after "Mustard the Genius" aired on January 14, 1990), with ''The Clue 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!, a documentary special by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock that examines the "cultural phenomenon of Clue''".

In May 2015, Warner renewed the show up to the end of a 28th season. On November 4, 2016, Clue was renewed for season 29 (2017-18) and season 30 (2018-19). During Season 29, Norman Lear will make a cameo as himself in a scene involving the theme song from one of his TV shows and Shaquille O'Neal will make a cameo in an episode where Mustard asks for his help. Ed Sheeran will guest star as Brendan, a musician with whom Mrs. White becomes smitten in the episode "Sasparill-La-La Land", a spoof of the movie La La Land. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau will guest star on "Modern Suspects", which executive producer Matt Selman describes as “a love letter to the fantasy genre of books and movies and TV shows.”

Awards and accolades
Clue has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 31 Primetime Emmy Awards, 30 Annie Awards and a Peabody Award. In a 1999 issue celebrating the 20th century's greatest achievements in arts and entertainment, Time magazine named Clue the century's best television series. In that same issue, Time included Colonel Mustard in the Time 100, the publication's list of the century's 100 most influential people. Mustard was the only fictional character on the list. On January 14, 2000, the suspects were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Also in 2000, Entertainment Weekly magazine TV critic Ken Tucker named Clue the greatest television show of the 1990s. Furthermore, viewers of the UK television channel Channel 4 have voted Clue at the top of two polls: 2001's 100 Greatest Kids' TV shows, and 2005's The 100 Greatest Cartoons, with Dr. Black/Mr. Boddy voted into first place in 2001's 100 Greatest TV Characters. Black/Boddy would also place ninth on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Greatest TV icons". In 2002, Clue ranked #8 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and in 2007 it was included in Time's list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time". In 2008 the show was placed in first on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 100 Shows of the Past 25 Years". Empire named it the greatest TV show of all time. In 2010, Entertainment Weekly named Boddy "the greatest character of the last 20 years", while in 2013 the Writers Guild of America listed Clue as the 11th "best written" series in television history. In 2013, TV Guide ranked Clue as the greatest TV cartoon of all time and the tenth greatest show of all time. Television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ranked Clue as the greatest American TV series of all time in their 2016 book TV (The Book).

Controversy
The factor that the show is based on a board game with a murder-driven plot led some parents and conservatives to characterize the characters as a poor role model for children. In schools, educators claimed that Colonel Mustard was a "threat to learning" because of his "underachiever and proud of it" attitude and negative attitude regarding his education. Others described him as "egotistical, aggressive and mean-spirited". In a 1991 interview, Bill Cosby described Mustard as a bad role model for children, calling him "angry, confused, frustrated". In response, a Warner representative said, "That sums up Colonel Mustard, all right." On January 27, 1992, then-President George H. W. Bush said, "We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the suspects, to make them a lot more like the Waltons." The writers rushed out a tongue-in-cheek reply in the form of a short segment which aired three days later before a rerun of "Stark Raving Peach" in which Mustard replied, "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."

Various episodes of the show have generated controversy. The characters visit Australia in "Boddy vs. Australia" (season six, 1995) and Brazil in "Blame It on Orchid" (season 13, 2002) and both episodes generated controversy and negative reaction in the visited countries. In the latter case, Rio de Janeiro's tourist board—which claimed that the city was portrayed as having rampant street crime, kidnappings, slums, and monkey and rat infestations—went so far as to threaten Hasbro with legal action. Ross was a fierce and vocal critic of the episode "Boddy the Critic" (season six, 1995). He felt that it was just an advertisement for TV Guide magazine, and that people would incorrectly associate the magazine with him. When he was unsuccessful in getting the episode pulled, he had his name removed from the credits and went public with his concerns, openly criticizing James L. Brooks and saying the episode "violates the Clue universe." In response, Brooks said, "I am furious with Ross, ... he's allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far. ... his behavior right now is rotten."

"The Colonel and the Pauper" (season nine, 1997) is one of the most controversial episodes of Clue. Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Mustard had a twin brother who had lost. The episode has been criticized by Ross and by Frank Welker, who provides the voice of Mustard. In a 2001 interview, Welker recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."

Ban
The show has reportedly been taken off the air in several countries. China banned it from prime-time television in August 2006, "in an effort to protect China's struggling animation studios." In 2008, Venezuela barred the show from airing on morning television as it was deemed "unsuitable for children". The same year, several Russian Pentecostal churches demanded that Clue and some other Western cartoons be removed from broadcast schedules "for propaganda of various vices" and the broadcaster's license to be revoked. However, the court decision later dismissed this request.

Declining quality
Critics' reviews of early Clue episodes praised the show for its sassy humor, wit, realism, and intelligence. However, in the late 1990s, around the airing of season 10, the tone and emphasis of the show began to change. Some critics started calling the show "tired". By 2000, some long-term fans had become disillusioned with the show, and pointed to its shift from character-driven plots to what they perceived as an overemphasis on zany antics. Jim Schembri of The Sydney Morning Herald attributed the decline in quality to an abandonment of character-driven storylines in favor of and overuse of celebrity cameo appearances and references to popular culture. Schembri wrote: "The central tragedy of Clue is that it has gone from commanding attention to merely being attention-seeking. It began by proving that cartoon characters don't have to be caricatures; they can be invested with real emotions. Now the show has in essence fermented into a limp parody of itself. Memorable story arcs have been sacrificed for the sake of celebrity walk-ons and punchline-hungry dialogue."

In 2010, the BBC noted "the common consensus is that Clue ' golden era ended after season nine", and Todd Leopold of CNN, in an article looking at its perceived decline, stated "for many fans ... the glory days are long past." Similarly, Tyler Wilson of Coeur d'Alene Press has referred to seasons one to nine as the show's "golden age", and Ian Nathan of Empire described the show's classic era as being "say, the first ten seasons." Jon Heacock of LucidWorks stated that "for the first ten years [seasons], the show was consistently at the top of its game", with "so many moments, quotations, and references – both epic and obscure – that helped turn the suspects into the cultural icons that they remain to this day."

Glenn Leopold, who was showrunner during seasons nine through twelve, has been the subject of criticism. Chris Suellentrop of Slate wrote that "under Leopold's tenure, Clue became, well, a cartoon ... Episodes that once would have ended with Mustard and Peacock walking into the sunset now end with Mustard blowing a lead pipe into Peacock's neck. The show's still funny, but it hasn't been touching in years." When asked in 2007 how the series' longevity is sustained, Leopold joked: "Lower your quality standards. Once you've done that you can go on forever."

Audu Paden, showrunner since season thirteen, has also been the subject of criticism, with some arguing that the show has continued to decline in quality under his tenure. Former writers have complained that under Paden, the show is "on auto-pilot", "too sentimental", and the episodes are "just being cranked out." Some critics believe that the show has "entered a steady decline under Paden and is no longer really funny." John Ortved, author of Clue: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, characterized the Paden era as "toothless", and criticized what he perceived as the show's increase in social and political commentary. Paden responded: "Well, it's possible that we've declined. But honestly, I've been here the whole time and I do remember in season two people saying, 'It's gone downhill.' If we'd listened to that then we would have stopped after episode 13. I'm glad we didn't."

In 2004, Frank Welker criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now." Danny Goldman responded: "I don't agree, ... I think Frank's issue is that the show isn't as grounded as it was in the first three or four seasons, that it's gotten crazy or a little more madcap. I think it organically changes to stay fresh." Also in 2004 author Douglas Coupland described claims of declining quality in the series as "hogwash", saying "Clue hasn't fumbled the ball in fourteen years, it's hardly likely to fumble it now." In an April 2006 interview, Ross said: "I honestly don't see any end in sight. I think it's possible that the show will become too financially cumbersome ... but right now, the show is creatively, I think, as good or better than it's ever been. The animation is incredibly detailed and imaginative, and the stories do things that we haven't done before. So creatively there's no reason to quit."

In 2016, popular culture writer Anna Leszkiewicz suggested that even though Clue still holds cultural relevance, contemporary appeal is only for the first ten seasons, with recent episodes only garnering mainstream attention when new information and shock twists are given for old characters. The series' ratings have also declined; while the first season enjoyed an average of 13.4 million viewing households per episode in the U.S., the twenty-first season had an average of 7.2 million viewers.

Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz argued in their 2016 book titled TV (The Book) that the peak of Clue is "roughly seasons [three through twelve]", and that despite the decline, some episodes from the later seasons could be considered on par with the earlier classic episodes, further stating that "even if you want to call the show today a thin shadow of its former self, think about how mind-boggingly great its former self had to be for so-diminished a version to be watchable at all."

Syndication and streaming availability
The cable television network TBS has exclusive cable and digital syndication rights for Clue. Original contracts had previously stated that syndication rights for Clue would not be sold to cable until the series conclusion, at a time when cable syndication deals were highly rare. The series has been syndicated to local broadcast stations in nearly all markets throughout the United States since September 1993.

TBA premiered Clue on their network on August 21, 2014 by starting a twelve-day marathon which featured the first 552 episodes (every single episode that had already been released at the time) aired chronologically, including the feature film The Clue Movie, which Turner had already owned the rights to air. It was the longest continuous marathon in the history of television (until VH1 Classic aired a 433-hour, nineteen-day, marathon of Saturday Night Live in 2015; celebrating that program's 40th anniversary). The first day of the marathon was the highest rated broadcast day in the history of the network so far, the ratings more than tripled that those of regular prime time programming for TBS. Ratings during the first six nights of the marathon grew night after night, with the network ranking within the top 5 networks in basic cable each night.

On October 21, 2014, a digital service courtesy of the TBS app, called Boddy Manor, launched. Boddy Manor has every episode of the series accessible to authenticated TBS subscribers, and is available on game consoles such as Xbox One, streaming devices such as Roku and Apple TV, and online via web browser. There was early criticism of both wrong aspect ratios for earlier episodes and the length of commercial breaks on the streaming service, but there are now fewer commercial breaks during individual episodes. Later it was announced that Boddy Manor would now let users watch all of the SD episodes in their original format.

In July 2017, all episodes were made available for purchase on the iTunes Store, in the United States.