Not since Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, a Saturday morning series that spent 2 seasons on ABC (1970-2) had there been a show built around monkeys. After the debacle that was The Chimp Channel, there won't be another for a while, unless someone reimagines Link for a modern audience.
The Chimp Channel was spun from TBS' Monkey'd Movies skits on Dinner & A Movie. Those skits parodied everything from movies to biting the corporate hand that fed it, doing skits based on WCW wrestling and Atlanta Braves baseball. Some genius at TBS thought it might work as a sketch comedy series or a sitcom. However, they found out, just as Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels has discovered a few times, expanding a popular skit into something longer doesn't always work.
Worse, Tom Stern, the man behind Monkey'd Movies, was fired by TBS before the Chimp Channel's debut, after he acted out his frustrations over creative differences via a bizarre form of performance art, or so he'd claim. Despite a talented voice cast that included the likes of Maurice LaMarche (Pinky & The Brain) and Dwight Schultz (ex-The A-Team, Star Trek: The Next Generation), the Channel was shut down after 13 episodes, losing viewers from its lead-in, WCW Thunder. Then again, the quality of wrestling at the time wasn't that great, anyway.
Here's a sample clip:
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