Bob and Margaret

Bob and Margaret is an adult animated television series created by David Fine and Alison Snowden and co-produced by Nelvana and Channel 4 as a collaboration, both financial and artistic, between the United Kingdom and Canada. The last two seasons were produced without Channel 4 (i.e. Nelvana and Philippine Animators Group Inc.) but with continuing British involvement in the animation, cast, and screenwriting. The series was based on the Academy Award-winning short film Bob's Birthday, featuring the same main characters, which won the Best Animated Short Film Oscar in 1994. In Canada, it was the highest-rated Canadian-made animated series ever when it aired in primetime on Global. The show revolves around a married English couple named Bob and Margaret Fish. They are a middle-class professional working couple of forty-ish with no children and two dogs named William and Elizabeth, who often serve as surrogates for children and are considered to be characters with personalities in their own right. Bob is a dentist and Margaret is a chiropodist. Premise Bob and Margaret struggle with everyday issues and mid-life crises. Stories often revolve around the mundane, but in a way that is eminently relatable, from the trials of shopping to dealing with friends who annoy them but owe them a dinner. They are often seen enjoying various takeaways - curries, various Chinese dishes, and especially pizza - as they navigate their lazy, sedentary homelives. In the first two seasons, Bob and Margaret live in England, in the South London community of Balham. For the third and fourth seasons, they move to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, allowing the writers to explore the humour of the culture clash. The move was mandated by the realities of funding after Channel 4 backed out, with certain Canadian grants and tax benefits being dependent on stories being physically based in Canada. As such, the transition was necessary to finance the show's continued production. Fine and Snowden chose to take an executive role on these latter two seasons, reviewing scripts and consulting, but not involved in as granular detail as they were for the first two seasons. Snowden continued to provide Margaret's voice, but Brian George replaced Andy Hamilton as Bob's voice.