Gimme a d'oh!

The Simpsons can lay reasonable claim to being the most influential TV series ever made. As the long-in-development movie version comes to cinemas, Donald Clarkehears from creator Matt Groening and assesses the show's cultural impact

SOME weeks back, following the US broadcast of the final episode of The Sopranos, media outlets abounded with hysterical eulogies to that distinguished drama series. David Remnick, editor of the eye-wateringly highbrow New Yorker, went so far as to describe the show as "the richest achievement in the history of television".

Colleagues on every periodical, from Popular Mechanics to Big Jugs Weekly fought to add their voices to the growing consensus. The Sopranos, they all maintained, was the greatest TV series ever produced.

Really? I am reminded of a pithy phrase attributed to the youngest son of another dysfunctional American family: eat my shorts, dude! Terrific as Dr Who, Columbo, Star Trek, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, yes, The Sopranos may be, the finest show ever on television must surely be The Simpsons.

No other series has been so influential. None has had such wide appeal.

Stepping before an audience of journalists to discuss the The Simpsons Movie, which arrives here next week after many years in development, Matt Groening, the show's unstoppably affable creator, was greeted by a rush of warmth so powerful it threatened to blow him off the stage.

"Usually in our job we do our work and then go home," he said. "This really is the first time a real audience has seen an excerpt from the movie and knew what was coming. The response from sitting back there in the audience was incredibly gratifying."

The opening 10 minutes that were screened for the hacks suggest that The Simpsons Movie will contain the usual busy array of pop cultural references, sideswipes at convention and carefully timed slapstick. We are so familiar with the innovations The Simpsons brought to television, that it is quite possible to become blase about the show's achievements.

Surely animation always had a place on mainstream TV. The sort of dense parodies in which the show specialises have long been a staple of comedy. Haven't they? Not quite.

When The Simpsons debuted on the Fox Network in 1989, many viewers, after considering the medium and the conspicuous presence of three juvenile characters, wrote the show off as a children's entertainment. For the first few years, Bart Simpson, proud underachieving tyke, was assumed to be the protagonist of the show.

It took some time for blinkered viewers to register that Homer Simpson - a yellow everyman whose innate kindness is often obscured by his short temper - was the character around whom the series' beautiful chaos revolved. For many decades, the phrase "fun for all the family" had sent poisonous chills down the spines of sensitive parents. Here was a show that (another dread phrase) people of all ages could comfortably savour.

Matt Groening, born 53 years ago in Portland, Oregon, had been revered as a cartoonist of genius long before he was asked to provide snippets of animation for The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987. James L Brooks, the series' producer, initially wanted Groening to turn his Life in Hell, a cartoon strip featuring neurotic rabbits that had long been a staple of such cool publications as the Village Voice, into a series of short sketches.

While sitting in the waitingroom before his meeting with Brooks, Groening suddenly began to have concerns about losing the rights to his bunnies and, inspired by who knows what, hastily sketched what would soon become the world's favourite family. The snippets found an audience, and the Simpsons' own series emerged two years later.

"The characters are named after members of my own family," Groening told us. "I have a father named Homer. My mother is Margaret - Marge for short. I do have sisters called Lisa and Maggie. When it came to name the boy, I thought: can I call him Matt? I could never do that. But the characters are nothing like my family."

Long before Homer referred to the current occupant of the White House as Commander Cuckoo-Bananas, it was clear that the show's creators were unapologetic men and women of the left. But Groening and his colleagues have always been careful not to ridicule or patronise middle-America. The Simpsons are, in their habits and attitudes, archetypal inhabitants of what we now know as the Red States. They are a conventional nuclear family. They attend church. But - though Reverend Lovejoy might be a self-righteous boob and Principal Skinner a mummy's boy - the writers never allow the series to undermine the family's core beliefs.

In Homer the Heretic, a classic episode from 1992, the paterfamilias stops going to church and begins spending Sundays lounging on the couch in his slippers. After being saved from a fire, he sees the error of his ways and returns to the chapel where, his soul lightened, he dozes happily through Lovejoy's sermon. Lisa, the family's radical vegetarian, does stray from Christianity, but only makes it as far as Buddhism.

"We're going to keep trying to strengthen the American family," George Bush Sr gibbered in the year Homer the Heretic was first broadcast. "To make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons."

Bush, who must never have watched an episode, seemed unaware that, the odd ill-advised strangling aside, the Simpsons had a great deal in common with the Waltons. It is part of the genius of the series that it forwards progressive politics while simultaneously celebrating the decent values of ordinary, God-fearing Americans. There is nothing hoity-toity or sanctimonious about the show's critique of the republic.

Another significant innovation resulted from Groening's decision to people an entire city with distinct comic creations, many of whom would eventually have entire episodes built around them. The Simpsons is not just about the Simpsons. it is about Groundskeeper Willie, Bumblebee Man, Lionel Hutz, the Sea Captain, Kent Brockman and a few dozen other cranks, maniacs and losers. No previous TV series had dared (or bothered) to create a cast so large, but, right from the first episode, the creators of The Simpsons set out to allow no character, however apparently insignificant, to slide into the background.

An entire PhD thesis could be built around an examination of the puzzling relationship between Lenny and Carl, Homer's affable workmates. What does Comic Book Guy get up to when the blinds are drawn? What did Troy McClure do to all those fish?

As the 1990s progressed and the show's excellence became universally acknowledged, a dizzying array of celebrities queued up to offer the imprimatur that comes from a guest appearance. Notwithstanding the contributions of Michael Jackson, Tony Blair and Kirk Douglas, the most significant appearance may, perhaps, have been that of Thomas Pynchon. Long considered a recluse, the author of Gravity's Rainbow and V emerged from hiding on two occasions to appear as himself.

The presence of a cartoon version of America's most puzzlingly referential novelist - with a paper bag over his head - suggested that The Simpsons had become the supreme mediator between highbrow and lowbrow culture.

Such widespread acceptance helped convince the American networks that animation could attract viewers of all ages and intellects. It hardly needs to be said that South Park, King of the Hill, Family Guy and Groening's own Futurama would never have made it on screen without the mighty Simpsons.

The Sopranos and The Simpsons both managed the notable feat of changing TV forever. Whereas The Simpsons brought a postmodern sensibility to television comedy and made animation respectable for adult audiences, The Sopranos encouraged producers to pursue lengthier storylines with fruitier language. But only one of those two shows features an episode titled I Am Furious Yellow.

Now, I know what you are thinking: Only somebody with suet for brains would dispute the original brilliance of The Simpsons. But, to drag up a phrase used about any comic institution that lasts longer than 10 minutes, it's not as funny as it used to be.

True enough. Our own familiarity and a tendency towards messy plotting on the writers' part have lessened the comic impact of the show somewhat. But there are still more good ideas in an average episode of The Simpsons than can be found in a whole series of Will and Grace.

Still, one does wonder why Groening has chosen this point in time to finally deliver The Simpsons Movie.

"We've been talking about doing a movie since 1992, but we've always been doing the show. We don't take holidays," Groening told us. "But, finally, we decided as we came up on our 20th year and our 400th episode that the time had come to make the movie."

Seems as good a reason as any. When asked about plans to end the series, both Groening and Al Jean, the show's executive producer, make it very clear that we should not expect a final episode any time soon. Homer, unlike Tony Soprano, has staying power.

The Simpsons Movie opens on July 26th