Family Guy is an American adult animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian. The show is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island, and exhibits much of its humor in the form of cutaway gags that often lampoon American culture.
The family was conceived by MacFarlane after developing two animated films, The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve. MacFarlane redesigned the films' protagonist, Larry, and his dog, Steve, and renamed them Peter and Brian, respectively. MacFarlane pitched a seven-minute pilot to Fox in 1998, and the show was greenlit and began production. Shortly after the third season of Family Guy had aired in 2002, Fox canceled the series, with one episode left unaired. Adult Swim burned off the episode in 2003, finishing the series' original run. However, favorable DVD sales and high ratings for syndicated reruns on Adult Swim convinced the network to renew the show in 2004 for a fourth season, which began airing on May 1, 2005.
Since its debut on January 31, 1999, 284 episodes of Family Guy have been broadcast. Its fifteenth season began on September 25, 2016. Family Guy has been nominated for 12 Primetime Emmy Awards and 11 Annie Awards, and has won three of each. In 2009, it was nominated for an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, the first time an animated series was nominated for the award since The Flintstones in 1961. Family Guy has also received criticism, including unfavorable comparisons to The Simpsons.
Many tie-in media have been released, including Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, a straight-to-DVD special released in 2005; Family Guy: Live in Vegas, a soundtrack-DVD combo released in 2005, featuring music from the show as well as original music created by MacFarlane and Walter Murphy; a video game and pinball machine, released in 2006 and 2007, respectively; since 2005, six books published by Harper Adult based on the Family Guy universe; and Laugh It Up, Fuzzball: The Family Guy Trilogy (2010), a series of parodies of the original Star Wars trilogy. In 2008, MacFarlane confirmed that the cast was interested in producing a feature film and that he was working on a story for a film adaptation.
A spin-off series, The Cleveland Show, featuring Cleveland Brown, aired from September 27, 2009, to May 19, 2013. "The Simpsons Guy", a crossover episode with The Simpsons, aired on September 28, 2014. Family Guy is a joint production by Fuzzy Door Productions and 20th Century Fox Television and syndicated by 20th Television. In 2013, TV Guide ranked Family Guy the ninth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time.
On May 15, 2016, Family Guy was renewed for a fifteenth season, which premiered on September 25 the same year.
The show revolves around the adventures of the Griffin family, consisting of father Peter Griffin, a bumbling yet well-intentioned blue-collar worker; Lois, a stay-at-home mother and piano teacher who is a member of the wealthy Pewterschmidt family; Meg, their awkward teenage daughter who is constantly ridiculed and ignored by the family; Chris, their teenage son, who is overweight, unintelligent and a younger version of his father in many respects; and Stewie, their diabolical infant son of ambiguous sexual orientation who has adult mannerisms and uses stereotypical archvillain phrases. Living with the family is their witty, smoking, martini-swilling, sarcastic, English-speaking anthropomorphic dog Brian, though he is still considered a pet in many respects.
Recurring characters appear alongside the Griffin family. These include the family's neighbors: sex-crazed airline pilot bachelor Quagmire; African American deli owner Cleveland and his wife Loretta (later Donna); paraplegic police officer Joe, his wife Bonnie and their baby daughter Susie; neurotic Jewish pharmacist Mort, his wife Muriel, and their geeky and annoying son Neil; and elderly child molester Herbert. TV news anchors Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons, Asian reporter Tricia Takanawa, and Blaccu-Weather meteorologist Ollie Williams also make frequent appearances. Actors Adam West and James Woods guest star as themselves in various episodes.
Cast[]
| Image | Character | USA | Mex | Bra | Can(French) | Ger | Fra | Ita | Hun | Spa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Peter Griffin | Seth MacFarlane | Humberto Vélez | Luiz Carlos de Moraes | Daniel Picard | Jan Odle | Michel Dodane | Mino Caprio | József Kerekes | Juan Perucho |
| Jesús Barrero | ||||||||||
| Alejandro Mayén | ||||||||||
| Óscar Gómez | ||||||||||
|
Lois Griffin | Alex Borstein | Sylvia Garcel | Adriana Pissardini | Aline Pinsonneault | Katharina Lopinski | Maïk Darah | Antonella Rinaldi | Vándor Éva | Luisa Ezquerra & Gloria Núñez |
| Linda Herold | ||||||||||
| Adriana Casas | ||||||||||
| Nallely Solís | ||||||||||
| Karina Altamirano | ||||||||||
|
Meg Griffin | Tara Strong & Lacey Chabert & Mila Kunis | Cony Madera | Raquel Marinho | Émilie Bibeau | Christine Stichler | Sylvie Jacob | Maura Cenciarelli | Nemes Takách Kata | Adelaida López |
| Angélica García | ||||||||||
| Mariana Ortiz | ||||||||||
|
Chris Griffin | Kevin Michael Richardson & Seth Green | Luis Daniel Ramírez | Marcos Hailer & Yuri Chesman | Alexandre Fortin | Butz Combrinck & Benedikt Gutjan | Christophe Lemoine & Luc Boulad | Davide Lepore | Hamvas Dániel | Fernando Cabrera |
|
Stewie Griffin | Seth MacFarlane | René García | Wellington Lima | Frédéric Desager | Manuel Straube | Yann Le Madic | Nanni Baldini | Dolmány Attila | Eduardo Gutiérrez |
| Mario Hernández | ||||||||||
|
Brian Griffin | Seth MacFarlane | Gerardo Reyero | César Leitão | Tristan Harvey | Frank Engelhardt | Michel Dodane | Leslie James La Penna | Schnell Ádám | Luis Bajo |
| Juan Carlos Tinoco | Hélio vaccari | |||||||||
|
Glenn Guagmire | Seth MacFarlane | Luis Alfonso Padilla | Gileno Santoro & Tatá Guarnieri & Dado Monteiro | Jean-François Beaupré | Ivar Combrinck & Hans-Georg Panczak | Patrice Dozier | Enrico Di Troia | Seder Gábor | David Beteta |
|
Joe Swanson | Patrick Warburton | Benjamín Rivera | Antônio Moreno | Patrick Chouinard | Mathieu Buscatto | Varga Rókus | Antonio Fernández Muñoz | ||
| Alfonso Ramírez | ||||||||||
| Gerardo Vásquez | ||||||||||
|
Cleveland Brown | Mike Henry & Arif Zahir | Denis Roy | Gérard Surugue | Renato Cecchetto | Kapácsy Miklós |