No lawyer show on television was as hard-hitting and ripped-from-the-headlines as Adult Swim‘s Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. Wait, what? No, that can’t be right. “Hard-hitting?” “Ripped-from-the-headlines?” The show where that one Hanna-Barbera superhero was a lawyer and defended other Hanna-Barbera characters? In actuality, Harvey Birdman was one of the best satires of the early Adult Swim years, and we’ve been worse off for it being gone these past 11 years. Now it’s coming back, for perhaps the most incisive and scathing half-hour they’ve ever done: Harvey Birdman, Attorney General.
In a press release designed to look like a presidential announcement, Adult Swim set the stage for this fall’s big Harvey Birdman return. Gary Cole is returning as the voice of Harvey, now the newly appointed attorney general to megalomaniac billionaire President Phil Ken Sebben (voiced as ever by Stephen Colbert). His first act as AG is to try to find a way to remove President Phil Ken Sebben from office, “before everyone starts to worry it’s more than the ridiculous plot to an animated show.” Oh no; something like this could never happen.
“This is a great day for our country and for no one else,” said Erik Richter, co-creator of Harvey Birdman. “It’s funny because it’s true. Wait, not funny because it’s true,” said co-creator Michael Ouweleen.
The special brings back the rest of the original voice cast, including John Michael Higgings and Mentok the Mindtaker; Paget Brewster as Birdgirl; Chris Edgerly as Peter Potamus; Peter MacNicol as X the Eliminator; and Phil LaMarr as Black Vulcan.
The creators are really going for something here, and we can’t wait to see how badly the cartoon world skewers our real world when Harvey Birdman, Attorney General premieres this fall.
Image: Adult Swim
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He’s written the animation retrospectives Batman: Reanimated, X-Men: Reanimated, Cowboy Rebop, and Samurai reJacked. Follow him on Twitter!
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