Even before Punch & Judy slapped each other senseless for giggling audiences in 17th-century Britain, the antics of puppets have delighted young and old alike.
The star of “Greg the Bunny,” a Fox series premiering Wednesday, is not Punch & Judy. If young and old watch the show together, the old likely will find themselves clapping their hands over the eyes and ears of the young and hustling them off to watch something safer, like “WWF Smackdown!”
“Greg the Bunny” follows the adventures of a small, brown bunny puppet (or “fabricated American,” as he prefers to say) who has just gotten his dream job on the children’s show “Sweetknuckle Junction,” with some help from his human roommate, Jimmy (Seth Green), the son of the show’s producer (Eugene Levy).
The cast of “Sweetknuckle Junction” is a mixture of humans and puppets, the conceit being that puppets are alive and independent. Greg (whose button eyes in the show’s pilot were replaced with slightly less creepy doll eyes for the series) is a wisecracking smartmouth with a bad attitude and an addiction to video games.
The concept for the half-hour show actually was born in 1997 as part of “Junktape,” a New York public-access TV show created by Dan Milano, Spencer Chinoy and Sean Baker. In January, 1999, Independent Film Channel (IFC) offered Milano and Chinoy the opportunity to do “The Greg the Bunny Show” as a series of five-to-10-minute spots introducing Tuesday-night IFC films.
After 18 months on IFC, Milano and Chinoy reinvented “Greg the Bunny” one more time, eventually landing their current gig on Fox.
While “Greg” uses puppets — and Milano and Chinoy currently are writing “Muppet Haunted House” for Jim Henson Productions — it cannot in any way be confused with a series suitable for children (for instance, Jimmy’s girlfriend’s dog is neutered just off-camera in one episode to keep him from chewing Greg to bits).
“Greg” may have one big rabbit foot in fantasy, but its other is planted squarely in TV satire — and there’s a reason for that.
Milano and Chinoy’s fellow executive producer is Steve Levitan, whose long list of credits includes being co-executive producer of HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show.” For those without pay cable, the comedy, which ran for six seasons, starred Garry Shandling as an embittered, dysfunctional late-night talk show host.
A look behind the curtain at the nightmare world of TV chat, “Larry” skewered actors, writers, producers, networks, fans and hangers-on with equal glee. Perhaps more popular with entertainment insiders than the public at large, “Larry” offered a dark vision of what goes on when the cameras go off.
An argument can be made that “The Muppet Show” — which lies at the far end of the TV spectrum from “Larry” — is the other direct antecedent of “Greg.” The 1970s syndicated series also featured puppets as independent beings, blending some of the Jim Henson Muppets that were seen on the PBS series “Sesame Street” with a bunch more puppet characters and human guests.
With Kermit the Frog acting as emcee, theater manager and occasional therapist, “The Muppet Show” went backstage for each week’s production, as the beleaguered Kermit shepherded diva Miss Piggy, piano-playing dog Rowlf, sensitive comic Fozzie Bear, eager “go-fer” Scooter and others through a series of musical and comedy skits.
