This Is America, Charlie Brown
Genre	Documentary Animated television special Adventure Comedy Drama Historical Family
Created by	Charles M. Schulz
Written by	Charles M. Schulz Lee Mendelson Bill Melendez
Directed by	Bill Melendez Sam Jaimes Evert Brown Sam Nicholson
Starring	Erin Chase Erica Gayle Brittany M. Thornton Brandon Stewart Jason Mendelson Marie Cole Curtis Andersen Hakeem Abdul-Samad Bill Melendez
Theme music composer	Ed Bogas Dave Brubeck David Benoit George Winston Wynton Marsalis Dave Grusin Vince Guaraldi
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of episodes	8
Production
Producers	Lee Mendelson Bill Melendez
Cinematography	Nick Vasu
Editors	Gordon D. Brenner Chuck McCann Warren Taylor
Running time	25 minutes
Production companies	Lee Mendelson–Bill Melendez Productions Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates United Media Productions
Original release
Network	CBS
Release	October 21, 1988 (1988-10-21) – May 23, 1989 (1989-05-23)
Related
It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown (1988) You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown (1990)

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This Is America, Charlie Brown is an eight-part animated television miniseries that depicts a series of events in American history featuring characters from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. It aired from 1988 to 1989 on CBS.^[1] The first four episodes aired as a weekly series in October and November 1988; the final four episodes aired monthly from February to May 1989.^[2]

Due to the nature of the events portrayed and the historical figures included — such as the Wright Brothers and George Washington — the opposite of most Charlie Brown cartoons, many adults were shown in full view along with the Peanuts gang, something that happened rarely in the animated films and specials and in only one early sequence in the comic strip.^[3] These adults were drawn in a style similar to It's Only a Game, another comic strip by Schulz that featured adults, as well other productions that were overseen by Peanuts regular Bill Melendez.

While all eight episodes were subsequently rerun by CBS in the summer of 1990, the series as a whole subsequently aired in the U.S. on Disney Channel between 1993 and 1997, which gave way to Nickelodeon between 1998 and 2003. However, "The Mayflower Voyagers" episode returned to television in 2008 (and aired each year through 2019, after which the Peanuts television specials migrated over to the Apple TV+ streaming platform) as companion material to pad the 1973 special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving to a full one-hour time slot. To accommodate the slot, portions of the episode were abridged.

Music

The series included music by many composers and performers including Peanuts regular Ed Bogas, Dave Brubeck, David Benoit (who would later take over scoring the specials starting with It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown), George Winston, Wynton Marsalis and Dave Grusin. This continued a tradition of using jazz musicians for the musical score; original composer Vince Guaraldi had died in 1976, though several of his music scores were reused, notably his signature tune, "Linus and Lucy". This miniseries featured The Winans, Desirée Goyette, and Lou Rawls as the singing vocals (Goyette and Rawls had previously worked with Melendez on the Garfield TV specials).

Cast

Episodes

Home media

The eight episodes, originally released individually on videocassette, were released in a two-DVD collector's set on March 28, 2006, by Paramount Home Entertainment. However, the DVD set went out of print once Warner Bros. purchased the rights to all Peanuts television specials. Warner Home Video has since reissued the miniseries on DVD as of June 17, 2014.^[4] It was also released on the digital format.

References

External links

• This Is America, Charlie Brown at IMDb
• This is America, Charlie Brown from Kim Cartoon