--- title: "Daria" year: 1997 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/daria" fi1m_score: 81 critics_score: 82 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-16T23:13:26.480255+00:00" updated: "2026-09-16T23:13:26.928783+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Daria (1997) Created by Glenn Eichler, Susie Lewis · MPA TV-PG · Comedy, Animation **Fi1m score: 81** · Critics 82 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* A girl in glasses says the quiet thing out loud for sixty-five episodes and a whole suburb pretends not to hear > Susie Lewis and Glenn Eichler gave a walk-on from *Beavis and Butt-Head* her own series. The drawing barely moves and the jokes are dry as chalk; it is a superb comedy about being fifteen, best when it lets its heroine be wrong. ## Synopsis The Morgendorffers have moved to the suburb of Lawndale, and on her first day at the local high school Daria (Tracy Grandstaff) fails a psychological test by answering it honestly. She is sent to a self-esteem class, where she meets Jane Lane (Wendy Hoopes), a painter who has taken the course several times and treats it as a hobby. Daria’s younger sister Quinn (also Hoopes) is popular within the hour and joins the Fashion Club, run by Sandi Griffin (Lisa Kathleen Collins). At home, their mother Helen (Hoopes) works too much and their father Jake (Julián Rebolledo) shouts at the newspaper. Daria wants to be left alone, and the town, the school and her family are determined not to allow it. ## Review Daria Morgendorffer began as a bit part in *Beavis and Butt-Head*, the girl in the corner who was cleverer than the two of them put together. Susie Lewis and Glenn Eichler gave her a series of her own on MTV in the spring of 1997, and kept it going for five seasons of thirteen episodes each. The premise is small. A teenager decides the world around her is stupid, and the show spends five years working out how right she is. It is a superb comedy, and the verdict is not in doubt. The interesting thing is that the show is not on her side as often as she thinks. It hardly moves. The characters are drawn in flat colour with thick black lines, the mouths open and shut, and nobody in Lawndale appears to blink. Twenty-odd directors worked on it across the run, Tony Kluck and Karen Disher among them, and they all understood the same thing: the flatness is the joke. A line is delivered, the drawing holds, and the silence does the work a reaction shot would do in any other cartoon. Karen Sztajnberg’s editing leaves that half-second after every remark. It is a style, not a shortage, and the stillness suits a town where nothing has happened for decades. The voices carry it. Tracy Grandstaff plays Daria low and level and almost never raises it, which means that when she does, over five seasons, you notice every time. Wendy Hoopes voices Jane, Quinn and Helen, three women who have nothing in common but a house, and we watched two full seasons before we found out they were the same actor. Julián Rebolledo’s Jake is a man permanently one headline away from a coronary. Marc Thompson’s Kevin and Lisa Kathleen Collins’s Brittany, the quarterback and the cheerleader, have one joke each and tell it well for sixty-five episodes, which is harder than it sounds. We laughed, a great deal, and most often at the television inside the television. *Sick, Sad World*, announced by John Worth Lynn, Jr., is a tabloid show the family watches together, and its headlines are the sharpest writing in the series. We laughed hardest, though, in the first episode, when Daria stands up in the self-esteem class and recites the entire course word for word because she has already read the booklet, and the teacher does not notice. Then we felt for the teacher. That is the show’s trick: it gives Daria the line and then quietly moves the camera to the person she has just flattened. What moved us, and we did not expect it, was Helen. Hoopes plays her as a lawyer who talks to her daughter the way she talks to clients, and the writers, Glenn Eichler and Anne D. Bernstein and Peggy Nicoll among them, let her know she is doing it. There are scenes at the kitchen table, late in the run, where the joke about the workaholic mother stops being a joke, and the flat drawing, which cannot cry, somehow makes it worse. The flaws are the flaws of a long run. The Fashion Club, Sandi and Stacy Rowe (Sarah Drew) and Tiffany Blum-Deckler (Ashley Albert), has one gag about vanity that the middle seasons return to more often than it deserves. Geoffrey Arend’s Upchuck is a lecher played for laughs in a way that would not pass now and did not really pass then. And the last two seasons, which test Daria against people who are kind to her, are quieter and less funny than the first three. We think that was the point, and we still missed the laughs. Set against the teen comedies of its decade, which made their money being cruel to the popular children, *Daria* is cruel to everyone, its heroine included, and then makes her pay for it. Set against *Beavis and Butt-Head*, it is the same drawing with the opposite intelligence. Watch it two episodes at a time. More than that and the sarcasm starts to sound like your own, which is not a compliment to either of you. *Fi1m score 81, published 16 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (5) - **The AV Club**, Nathan Rabin (B+): The critic praises the series for its uncompromising depiction of female adolescence and elevating sarcasm to an art form, while noting it challenges the heroine's cynicism as the show progresses. It singles out the rich, multi-dimensional heroines and bone-dry humor for praise. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/daria-the-complete-animated-series-1798164975) - **The Guardian** (80/100, inferred): The piece celebrates Daria as an iconic 90s MTV series that captured the essence of misfit teen girlhood and slacker feminism with sharp accuracy. It highlights the show's spin-off success from Beavis and Butt-Head and its enduring appeal as a relatable portrait of suburban life and female empowerment. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2017/mar/03/daria-90s-cartoon-teenage-feminism) - **Consequence** (85/100, inferred): The piece celebrates Daria as the 1990s’ sharpest commentary on suburban American teenage life and an unflinching look at the teenage experience two decades later. It singles out the show’s honest treatment of acceptance, friendship, and adolescent desires as what makes it enduring beyond its sarcastic wit. [Read](https://consequence.net/2018/06/darias-top-10-episodes/) - **Paste**, Michael Saba (85/100, inferred): The critic hails the DVD release of the full series as the definitive home for this cult classic portrait of teenage disaffection. He singles out the sharp, subversive wit of the lead character as a key strength that influenced later comedy. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/article/daria-the-complete-animated-series-dvd-review) - **Collider**, Michael Sullivan (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the complete series DVD set a welcome release that captures the show's enduring humor and insight into 90s teen culture. He singles out the extensive extras and completeness of the collection for praise while noting issues with packaging and replaced music. [Read](https://collider.com/daria-dvd-review-the-complete-series/) ## Details - **Created by:** Glenn Eichler, Susie Lewis - **Creator:** Glenn Eichler, Susie Lewis - **Director:** Ted Stearn, Machi Tantillo, Paul Sparagano, Tom Marsen, Anthony Davis, Karen Hyden, Guy Moore, Ken Kimmelman, Ray Kosarin, Joey Ahlbum, Margaret E. Rutherford, Chris Prynoski, Tony Kluck, Gloria DePonte, Aaron Augenblick, Patrick Smith, Karen Disher, Eric Fogel, Sue Perrotto - **Screenplay:** Peter Elwell, Peggy Nicoll, Dan Vebber, A.J. Poulin, Chris Marcil, Peter Gaffney, Ron Corcillo, Sam Johnson, Neena Beber, Jill Cargerman, Jacquelyn Reingold, Jonathan Greenberg, Rachelle Romberg, Rachel Lipman - **Writer:** Glenn Eichler, Peter Elwell, Peggy Nicoll, Dan Vebber, A.J. Poulin, Chris Marcil, Peter Gaffney, Ron Corcillo, Sam Johnson, Anne D. Bernstein - **Editor:** Karen Sztajnberg - **Music:** George Brennan, Janet Wygal - **Producer:** Glenn Eichler, Susie Lewis, Amy Palmer - **Cast:** Tracy Grandstaff as Daria Morgendorffer (voice); Wendy Hoopes as Jane Lane / Quinn Morgendorffer / Helen Morgendorffer (voice); Julián Rebolledo as Jake Morgendorffer (voice); Marc Thompson as Kevin Thompson (voice); Alvaro J. Gonzalez as Trent Lane (voice); Jessica Cydnee Jackson as Jodie Landon (voice); Lisa Kathleen Collins as Brittany Taylor / Sandi Griffin (voice); Geoffrey Arend as Charles "Upchuck" Ruttheimer III (voice) - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-PG - **Release (the US):** 3 March 1997 - **Genres:** Comedy, Animation ## Where to watch in the US - Paramount+: streaming, sd - Paramount+: free, sd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, CL, CO, EC, FR, GB, MX, PA, PE, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Ghost World* (2001), Fi1m 84: Two clever girls, one summer after school, and the same refusal to smile on cue — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ghost-world.md) - *My So-Called Life* (1994), Fi1m 87: Live-action, same decade, same corridors; Angela Chase would have sat with Daria at lunch — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/my-so-called-life.md) - *King of the Hill* (1997), Fi1m 82: Another flat-drawn suburb from the same year, kinder to its fathers and just as dry — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/king-of-the-hill-1997.md) - *Derry Girls* (2018): Teenage girls being appalling to each other with love, in a town with far bigger problems - *Welcome to the Dollhouse* (1995), Fi1m 82: The unhappy suburban schoolgirl without the safety of a punchline; harder, and honest — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/welcome-to-the-dollhouse.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/daria