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Heartland Hubby is first local animated sitcom series

SINGAPORE — Stand aside, Fred Flintstone, Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin — Singapore will now be taking its animated cue from Encik Lim Teh Peng, the fatherly figure in the first local animated sitcom, Heartland Hubby.

Heartland Hubby is a new 10-episode series. Photo: Channel 5

Heartland Hubby is a new 10-episode series. Photo: Channel 5

SINGAPORE — Stand aside, Fred Flintstone, Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin — Singapore will now be taking its animated cue from Encik Lim Teh Peng, the fatherly figure in the first local animated sitcom, Heartland Hubby.

Set to premiere on Jan 7 on MediaCorp TV Channel 5, the 10-episode series will follow the misadventures of Lim (voiced by veteran actor Lim Yu Beng), a typical middle-aged warrant officer who owns and runs a minimart with his wife, Molly (Petrina Kow). Their son, Robbie (Dwayne Tan) is a pretentious media student. Their daughters are both voiced by Denise Tan: Precocious 10-year-old genius Winnie and tomboy policewoman Cathy, who shares “weird sexual tension” with a neighbour (George Young).

Other voice actors include Ebi Shankara, Siti Khalijah, Alaric Tay, Chua Enlai, Judee Tan and Hossan Leong.

Heartland Hubby is the brainchild of Ervin Han, managing director and co-founder of design and animation studio Robot Playground Media, who describes it as “a spiritual remake” of that much-loved local sitcom Under One Roof.

“The heart of the show is the relationship with our family members, neighbours and friends, and how the lines between these three groups can and should be quite blurred,” he shared.

For Han, the impetus for creating Heartland Hubby was a desire to do something “undeniably local”.

“This will be the first time you will see a Housing and Development Board (HDB) estate in a cartoon. These are really interesting, exciting reasons for us to do this,” he said, adding: “My team and I have been developing and producing animation for the past 10 years, mainly for international broadcasters. But I’ve always wanted to create a show that’s distinctively local.”

Han is confident that local adult audiences are more than ready to give this animated series a shot. “Most people associate animation with kids’ programming. But I’ve always believed there’s an adult audience for prime-time animation and for general family viewing. In the United States, for example, animation has been a staple for many years since the Flintstones back in the ’60s and, over the past 25 years, it has been The Simpsons,” he said.

Animation’s advantage over live action is that “it opens up a different kind of storytelling for prime time,” he said. “With animation, you are able to get away with certain things that live action probably would find harder to do, in terms of the tone and the humour.”

And the tone for Heartland Hubby will be “a bit more absurdist”, which works well when the show tackles social issues in an allegorical manner. “For example, there are aliens and zombies … We use that as a premise to look at things such as social integration and why it’s necessary in our society. I think with animation, you’re looking at a lot of these issues and situations from a distance, so it’s a little unreal yet familiar.”

And, of course, a cartoon’s creator can indulge his sense of whimsy — by chucking in some talking cats. The show will feature a pair of feline commentators named Bobo and Chacha. “The writers tried to talk me out of it, but I said, ‘No, we are going to have talking animals,’” the self-professed cat lover chuckled.

“Stray cats are part of our HDB landscape. These two are like the two old men in The Muppet Show. They could be the two uncles in a coffee shop drinking and just complaining about everything under the sun.”

Catch Heartland Hubby starting on Jan 7, Wednesdays, at 9.30pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 5.

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