Monkeytown (TV series)

Monkeytown is a webseries created and produced by Samuel Anderson. It features the lives of a community of monkeys in a gated, monkey-only neighborhood. One of the characters is Buck Snortleson and his family, a character from Anderson's previous show, Judge Mia. Monkeytown is a sequel series to Judge Mia, and it does take place in the same universe and shares a few characters.

Production
The first word of the production of Monkeytown was released by Samuel Anderson on March 23, 2015, when he mentioned that he was interested in doing another webseries similar to Judge Mia. The premise of title of Monkeytown was confirmed two days later, March 25. Production and filming began on April 9. The official opening sequence was released as a teaser on April 10. The pilot episode was released April 12, 2015.

Opening sequence
The sequence that is played at the beginning of every episode was relased as a special preview on April 10, 2015, two days before the series premiere. The sequence begins with Buck, 25 years younger, sitting next to Mia, Turdsley, Humphrey, Nut, Fransisco, and Crokella (characters from Judge Mia). The Judge Mia theme song is playing. Then, young buck instantly grows into the adult Buck, and the theme song grinds to a hault. Looking around, Buck leaves his group of friends. New, futuristic music begins as Buck walks into a scene with his family: Karen, Jasmine, and Bradley. Buck sits in front of Bradley, he leans around it get in the view of the camera. The pre-credits begin, and an image of Buck is shown, along with his name. The same happens for Karen. Jasmine and Bradley share a frame, with both images and both names put together. After the credits, Karen puts her arm around Buck, and the camera pans out to reveal Season 1's entire main cast. Some of the characters identities were not yet released at the time of the opening sequence.

Episodes
The first season of Monkeytown is scheduled to have eight episodes. Samuel Anderson confirmed that every season would have at least eight episodes, but "we might go higher than that, sometimes".

Release
From April 12 to April 21, Monkeytown episodes were released on Sunday at 1:30 PM, Central Time. The schedule changed for "Work Problems", which was the first episode to be released on a Wednesday at 8:00 PM, Central Time. For the fifth episode, "Sweet Sixteen", complications caused the release date to be changed to Sunday once again. All following episodes will be released on Wednesday.The regular pattern is like this: The episode is premiered to a small audience; This is counted as the episode's official release day. The following day, the episode is posted to Monkeytown's offcial website for the rest of the audience.

Reception
Bennett Joel, a critic, was given a special reading of the first three episode's scripts. He gave the pilot episode a mild review, while the next two were critically acclaimed. About the entire series, he said "The well-loved soul of Judge Mia has a new incarnation, and it is Monkeytown."