The Flintstones Turn 50
Half a century ago, in 1960, an animated cartoon series, "The Flintstones", appeared on American television. They were watched by children and adults alike. The show was a parody of what urban life would have been like in the Stone Age. Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble made the prehistoric town of Bedrock a television star.
In the series Fred and Barney work at a rock quarry. Instead of going home to their families they drive to bowling alleys or drive-in movies. Wilma and Betty are housewives, Wilma has a little girl called Pebbles, Betty and Barney have adopted a boy called Bamm Bamm.
Fred often has fights with a pet tiger that doesn't want to sleep outside the house at night and with Dino, a baby dinosaur.
The series showed how families lived in the 1960s and was broadcast for six years. It was the longest running animated sitcom until 1997, when the Simpsons claimed the record.
Related Topics
Words:
- adopt = to take someone else's child into your home and treat it like a parent
- adult = grown up person
- animated= a film or show that shows pictures that seem to be moving
- appear = show
- bowling alley = a building where you go bowling
- broadcast = top show on TV
- century = a hundred years
- claim = the right to have
- drive-in = a place where you can watch films while you sit in your car
- parody = a film that copies something in a funny way
- prehistoric = about a time in history before anything was written down
- quarry = place where you dig big rocks out of the ground
- sitcom = a funny television programme in which the same characters appear in different situations every week
- urban = city like