In August 1997 Disney shutdown the Disney Afternoon block bringing an end to one of the greatest kids programs ever put on TV. However, Disney wasn’t done making cartoons. One month later Disney launched a new program known as Disney’s One Saturday Morning. Just like the name suggest this was a five hour block that appeared on Saturday mornings featuring classic Disney toons and all new ones as well. At the start of this program Disney was still low on creativity so they kept taking some of their most popular movies and turning them into toons. Although sometimes the movie wasn’t always a popular one it was just a well-known movie such as 101 Dalmatians. 101 Dalmatians isn’t necessarily a bad movie it just doesn’t have much to offer besides having one of the best Disney villains out there so making a series about this was a pretty tall order but they pulled it off. Somewhat.
In the show Roger and Anita have decided to move to the countryside and out of the city believing that the change in scenery would make everyone happier and they wouldn’t be so crowed in their townhouse. Once at the farm we focus on three of the Dalmatians. Lucky, Rolly, a new character named Cadpig who was the runt of the litter, and another new character named Spot a chicken who wants to be a Dalmatian and hangs out with Lucky and the others serving as the voice of reason. The show primarily focuses on their adventures on the farm while also defending it from the evil Cruella de Vil who in the show is now the evil leader of her own corporation, is the next door neighbor of Roger and Anita, and always plots to steal the land from them. Like I said the show works but at the same time it doesn’t work. It works in that this show has more story and character than the movie. In the movie the puppies really didn’t have that much character but here each puppy has their character that separates them from each other. Lucky is the leader, Cadpig the spiritual adviser, Rolly the fat comic relief character, and Spot the eccentric voice of reason. There are also a few fun side characters like there’s this swamp rat who’s always swindling the other animals on the farm and another dog named Pug who serves as the leader of the Bark Brigade and has this crazy obsession with cats believing there’s going to be a war with them. Cruella kind of gets a downgrade as she always seems to be approaching things from a business standpoint trying to make that extra buck. The show also expanded on her family a little such as giving her an evil niece, a mad scientist brother, and a wicked mother who just can’t be pleased. Yeah character wise the show is good the stories are where they drop the ball at. A lot of these stories were really inspired by the Rugrats. You got a few interesting storylines here and there but they never really did much with them and the ones that weren’t all that interesting just felt like a rip-off from the Rugrats and other sources of media. The lessons they present are good lessons that they don’t force down our throats but they’re predictable nonetheless. I also wasn’t a fan of the animation in this series. The characters have weird designs and everything looks all scratchy and rushed. Yeah the original movie had some scratchy animation too but it looked more sophisticated and elegant. You could tell that the artists for the movie were really taking their time on it and getting it just right. Now despite these problems I did still watch the show and liked it but it left a lot to be desired. There were many directions they could of gone to make this show better but just couldn’t do it. In the end the show was average at best. It had good points but it also had bad points. It was an average show at best but still not a bad watch.