User Reviews

In Australia, "The Barkleys" was released on CBS-Fox with another show by the same producers "The Houndcats" in 1988. They both became a child hood favorite despite the shoddy animation.

The two shows seem to have been made at roughly the same expense; the animation and script-writing are at about the same level. The Barkley's might be a tiny bit more satirical and intelligent. Most episodes revolve around the pivotal character, Arnie Barkley, the patriachal father of three children - sometimes browbeating, often unrelentingly pedantic and demanding. He maintains a superiority of his well-meaning neighbor Beagle (the Flanders), but is constantly sycophantic towards the owner of the bus company he works for (the Burns).

Not bad, this little comedy. The shoddiness of the overall production is more likely to endear than repulse.

The Barkleys while certainly not the nadir of the (now sadly completed) world of Staurday morning network cartoon shows, it was seen as that by some at the time. In 1972, VARIETY editorialized on the weekend animation as "shrunken adult programming", because all of the shows seemed to be pale imitations of prime-time conterparts. George Heinemann, the man in charge of NBC's children's programming, weakly defended his products by citing a single example of where this might be true, in that Henry Corden was instructed to try to sound like Carrol O'Connor's Archie Bunker character when doing The Barkleys. I would say the show is somewhat, at least cast wise,like All In The Family, but at the same time it's like Life Of Riley, too. I'd guess that Corden's voice was probably closer to William Bendix anyway. That he (Arnie Barkley) is a loudmouth bus driver sort of reminds one of yet another classic character, too. "Arnie" was the name of a forgotten series starring Hershel Bernardi that ended the day "The Barkleys" debuted. Just saying. It and all the other kids shows were, at that time anyway, spared the relentless dogmatic militant politics that had spread like a grass fire through prime time. Arnie had nothing new or socially relevant to say, it was an easy-for-kids to understand slapstick sitcom. The writing flaws are numerous, the story logic fails on many levels, and as been said, the animation is typical low-grade TV value of the time. Did kids really like it? My guess is they ignored it, as it was pitted against The Brady Kids on ABC and Josie And The Pussycats In Outer Space over at CBS.

I'm all for using previous art as inspiration, but when TV writers make a show with characters that are nearly identical to the characters of the show before it - that's just lazy, in my opinion. It takes effort to think of something new. The Barkleys, a cartoon about an anthropomorphic family of dogs, was adapted from All in the Family. Arnie (Henry Corden), is a cantankerous, narrow minded bus driver. Agnes (Joan Gerber), his wife, is a homemaking pushover. They have three children: long-haired hippie Roger (Steve Lewis), boy crazy Terry (Julie McWhirter), and nerdy Chester (Gene Andrusco). I know All in the Family is a classic, but it grates my nerves. Archie Bunker is too unlikeable and one-dimensional to be funny. All he does is spout hateful rhetoric, verbally abuse his daughter's husband for being Polish American, and talk to his wife like crap. Put all of that together, and it's just a bunch of people shouting at one another. With The Barkleys being a family friendly cartoon, the humor is way more lighthearted. Episodes revolve around Arnie's get-rich-quick schemes, and struggling to understand his kids. So the writers touched on poverty and the generational gap, which are still issues today. However, I found nothing appealing about this show as someone who lives in the 21st century. The episodes didn't make me laugh or even smile. Not that I was offended or anything - I just thought they were boring. They've been using the same family structure and stereotypes in shows for decades. Opposite sex couple with three kids. The oldest is a male, the middle child is a female, and the youngest is also a male. The mother is nurturing, while the father is an idiot, who does love his children, but deep down inside, doesn't want to be bothered with them or his wife, and would rather spend all of his Friday nights playing poker with his buddies. The lack of originality with comedy programs, whether it's animated or uses real actors/actresses, is why I avoid them. If you don't like All in the Family, you won't like this show. I suggest The Flintstones (coincidentally, Henry Corden voiced Fred Flintstone after the death of Alan Reed in 1977, the original voice actor) or The Jetsons if you want a cartoon that's still entertaining in the modern age.

I remember "The Barkleys" very well. It, along with "The Roman Holidays" and the live-action kids' game show "Runaround," was one of my favorite shows on NBC's Saturday morning schedule of 1972-73 (I was then 10 years old).

Two episodes I especially enjoyed were "The Great Disc Jockey," in which Arnie becomes a DJ at a local radio station playing old-timey music after he got fed up hearing the music the kids liked, and became spurned by said kids even more (son Roger was a DJ at the opening of that episode as well), and "For the Love of Money," in which Arnie sets Roger up with a haughty, high-society girl named Elsie Schnauzer.

And if Arnie Barkley's voice sounded familiar, it was because Henry Corden - who voiced Arnie - went on to become the full-time voice of Fred Flintstone after Alan Reed, who originally voiced Flintstone, died in 1973. And Joan Gerber, who voiced wife Agnes, was also heard in a concurrent animated "All in the Family" derivative, "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home," as matron Irma Boyle (both Agnes and Irma sounded very much alike).

I understand Disney/ABC (!) now owns all the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (aka DFE Films) shows (with the exception of "The Pink Panther," which is owned by MGM). Although select episodes of "The Barkleys" were on VHS tape in the late 80's and are now unavailable - long before Disney acquired DFE's backlog - the show has yet to make a DVD appearance. If Disney did renew the copyrights on "The Barkleys," then I can only hope someone like Shout! Factory or some other "video nostalgia" label will get the rights to all 13 episodes and put them on DVD; it would especially be nice to see the "Great Disc Jockey" episode again. It would be awful if "The Barkleys" was in the public domain because small-time video companies would snap it up, and they would very likely use poor-quality, unrestored film elements. (DFE Films, by the way, went out of business in 1981 and was ultimately absorbed into Marvel Comics Animation - which is now a division of Disney/ABC - thus explaining Disney's current ownership of "The Barkleys.")

As I've stated in other comments, all I can suggest is: (1) contact Disney, Shout! Factory, etc. And tell them you'd like to see all 13 episodes of "The Barkleys" on DVD; and (2) be sure to vote for it at TV Shows on DVD.com. If "The Barkleys" gets over 100 votes at that website, it might get Disney, etc.'s attention and they'll get it out of the vaults, renew the copyrights on the show if they haven't done so already, and get it on DVD (as of this posting, "The Barkleys" received only 38 paltry votes at TV Shows on DVD.com).

So for anybody else who remembers "The Barkleys" and would like to see the show again, don't delay - *take action now!*

(Postscript, May 9, 2020: "The Barkleys," in the same set with "The Houndcats," *was* finally released in 2015 on DVD by a small company, Film Chest Media Group. Apparently, Disney/ABC *didn't* renew the copyrights on either show since they are now in the public domain; two possible reasons why are because: (1) the picture "wavers" slightly back and forth on the second episode of "The Barkleys," and (2) the remastering quality on both series in the set was somewhat below par, both visually and aurally. (And, since NBC Universal blithely took the rights away from them for the Filmation shows around 2015, Retro TV has been repeating both series over and over again because of their public domain status, and they're about the only two "genuine" Saturday morning cartoons left that air on Saturday mornings on a broadcast network. Still, even though I saw both "The Barkleys" and "The Houndcats" on Retro TV for about four rerun increments each - and I now sleep in on Saturday mornings - I'm glad I now have the DVDs of each show since I now have the freedom to watch them again *whenever* I want, even if and when Retro TV decides to stop running them and despite the somewhat less-than-optimal quality (it's better than nothing at this point). Another plus: The DVD of "The Barkleys" has the series' final episode, "The Great Talent Scout Caper," *intact,* despite the slight sub-par mastering. For some strange reason, Retro TV decided *not* to air that episode, but only the 12 that came before it.)