The Simpsons in the UK

When The Tracey Ulman Show (the show which pretty much made The Simpsons) aired on the BBC, they decided to cut a few minutes from the show, specifically the Simpsons shorts. The BBC said the only thing they didn't like about the show was those weird little animated characters (of course, The Simpsons) and suggested maybe they could get rid of them because they would never catch on, funny since they’d show it later on to huge success.

The Simpsons remained a huge deal in this country well into the late noughties, gaining record viewers in 2006 on Sky for a Ricky Gervais guest episode that was heavily promoted. Two-three years later and everyone’s talking about Family Guy instead - itself a decade old then but gained big popularity on its return in the mid-noughties.

One thing about the Channel 4 run is how they initially seemed to make an effort to show most episodes unedited, featuring a few clips on the opening night that had never been shown on British TV before - including a quiz show hosted by Jamie Theakston that had a clip of Homer saying a word beginning with “W” to lots of shocked laughter from the panel/guests. This idea seemed to abruptly end a year later when a episode satirising New Orleans was shown soon after Hurricane Katrina, causing lots of complaints and now episodes are edited as much as (if not more) the 1990s Sky/BBC days.

Funny you mention that as one notable example was The Cartridge Family, which Sky refused to air on its flagship channel at all: one week after 9/11 in 2001, BBC Two aired the episode for the very first time, unedited: (it was first released in the UK on the Too Hot for TV VHS in 1999).


I know Channel 4, when they started airing the series, originally had a schedule with classic episodes at the old BBC Two time of 18.00, with new episodes at 22.30: but eventually decided to lump all episodes in the six-o-clock slot.

BBC 2 for a while also gave The Simpsons a primetime slot in 1998.



Honestly C4 should start showing new episodes at said time again given the new episodes (in the USA) are being rated TV-14 more and more from TV PG. Season 30 (which will show on C4 in the next few years) has the most episodes with the TV-14 rating at 9.

That sounded like a fake Homer. Not something you could imagine any of the right holders doing now.

Wasn't it originally Friday at 9 for the new episodes on C4? I remember there was a huge campaign for it and I got really excited having watched the same repeated episodes on BBC2 for years and then being amazingly disappointed at how unfunny the new episodes were.

To be fair BBC Two would have shown as many new to terrestrial episodes as Channel 4 did.

You should hear their Bart impression, it’s worse than Homer’s.

Lol, that's Jonathan Kydd's voice.

Does anyone remember The Simpsons Summer Giveaway Sky One did in 2004?
The only footage I could find was this on YouTube. Giveaway question at 4:26.

Channel 4 are ridiculous with their editing these days, they cut things out that Sky didn't even at the height of their prudish scissor phase in the 90s.

I actually remember around 2007 when T4 showed a coming up clip of the "this is where you register as a sex offender" line from Trash Of The Titans... which was then cut out of the episode itself. Again, Sky never cut that line, even when they were still cutting the word "crap" from most episodes that used it.

Episodes of the show are available on All 4. I watched the Season 15 episode The Regina Monologues this morning.