The Guide #207: How Britain embraced The Simpsons, America’s true first family

In this week’s newsletter: First shown in the UK 35 years ago, the landmark cartoon has wormed its way into our culture, from parliament put-downs to Bartman mania

Mum wouldn’t have Bart Simpson in our house. When, 35 years ago this month, The Simpsons first drifted across the Atlantic and on to UK screens, they brought with them a bad reputation. In the US, Matt Groening’s peerless animation had quickly become a ratings sensation after it debuted in 1989, but it was also a controversy magnet, particularly over its breakout delinquent star. The Simpsons was seen by the more conservative end of the US media as a bad influence on kids (a viewpoint famously echoed by President Ronald Reagan a few years later with his call for American families to be “more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons”). Plenty of US schools banned a massive-selling T-shirt with Bart declaring himself an “underachiever and proud of it, man”.

It’s unclear whether mum had read reports of these T-shirt bans – it’s just as likely that she simply saw The Simpsons as another brash American cartoon import at a time when UK TV was drowning in them (and airing on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV, to boot). Either way, the show was viewed with suspicion bordering on contempt. It would take a while for its subversive, satirical charms to be recognised.