Tom & Jerry Movies and Reboots: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975)

In 1975, Hanna and Barbera rebooted Tom and Jerry in the form of a Saturday morning cartoon, simply called The Tom and Jerry Show and also known as The New Tom & Jerry Show. They were given a more Laurel & Hardy-esque dynamic, working as a pair rather than rivals. While this could have worked, it still did not make sense to make them into friends, as it worked against the theme of cats chasing after mice. They could have easily used human characters in this series and it would not have changed as much.

This was made during the era in which Hanna Barbera were mainly made cartoons cheaply, which was an efficient way to create cartoons for television that would air in a schedule. It was a good way of incorporating both the enclosed nature of a sitcom and the imagination of a cartoon. This worked with shows like The Flinstones, The Jetsons, and Top Cat, however with Tom and Jerry it felt very inaproptiate. The characters were still silent, which, in the case of this reboot, really did not help much. It was only a short-lived series, but it is relevent in the context of my research, because it highlights another major feature within the Tom and Jerry shorts. The animation was a huge part of what made Tom and Jerry so effective.

I mentioned this when I talked about Tom and Jerry the Movie, but a major element to Tom and Jerry's quality was the animation of the characters. The characters' emotions and personalities were portrayed very well by their animation without the use of dialogue. And this is the problem with the series. This style of animation simply does not suit characters that are mostly silent. The stronger elements of Tom and Jerry was that there was so much dedication to their performances, and they felt like real 3-dimensional beings, so their emotions, actions, and were more realistic as a result. Whereas this series suffers due to the cheap quality of the animation, that is only really suitable for characters that can talk. The animation feels flat, and the performances stiff. This is not the kind of animation that should be used for silent characters. They lack the charisma and the energy needed to engage with the characters, so the illusion that they are simply drawings is not broken. Unlike Tom and Jerry the Movie, giving them a voice would probably be more beneficial.