--- title: "Family Guy" year: 1999 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/family-guy" fi1m_score: 63 critics_reviews: 2 published: "2026-09-16T23:44:26.475176+00:00" updated: "2026-09-16T23:45:11.917606+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." --- # Family Guy (1999) Created by Seth MacFarlane · MPA TV-14 · Animation, Comedy **Fi1m score: 63** · Critics: 2 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* The baby wants his mother dead, the dog wants a martini, and the plot has stepped out for a cutaway > Seth MacFarlane’s animated sitcom is quick, crude and often funny, and it is built on a trick, the cutaway gag, that saves it from every dull scene and stops it ever building one. Stewie and Brian are the reason to keep watching. ## Synopsis Quahog, Rhode Island. Peter Griffin (Seth MacFarlane), a heavy, loud, easily distracted father, lives with his long-suffering wife Lois (Alex Borstein), the daughter of a rich family, and their three children: Meg (Mila Kunis), a teenager nobody in the house listens to; Chris (Seth Green), an amiable lump; and Stewie (also MacFarlane), a baby with an English accent, a laboratory in his bedroom and plans to kill his mother. The family dog, Brian (MacFarlane again), talks, drinks martinis and reads. Next door live Glenn Quagmire (MacFarlane), a pilot with one interest, Cleveland Brown (Arif Zahir) and Joe Swanson (Patrick Warburton). Each episode gives Peter a scheme or a grievance and follows it until the next cutaway. ## Review Seth MacFarlane’s *Family Guy* first aired on 31 January 1999, and twenty-four seasons later it is still going. It is an animated sitcom about a heavy, stupid father, his patient wife, their overlooked children, a baby who wants his mother dead and a dog who talks, and in 1999 that was close to a description of [*The Simpsons*](https://film.one/tv/the-simpsons) too. The difference is how the joke arrives. *The Simpsons* tells a story and puts jokes in it. *Family Guy* starts a story, gets bored, cuts away to something that happened to Peter once, or never, and cuts back. It is quick, crude and often funny, and it is decent rather than good, because the trick that makes it funny is the trick that stops it being anything more. The cutaway is the whole method. Peter says this is worse than the time he did something, and for fifteen seconds we are in a boardroom, or a trench, or a 1980s advert, and then we are home again. Some of these are as good as any sight gag on television. Peter’s brawls with a man-sized chicken, which begin over a coupon and carry on through car parks and aeroplanes long after any sane editor would have stopped them, had us laughing helplessly the first time, and by the third we were checking how much of the episode was left. That is the show in one bit: a good idea run until it is a habit. MacFarlane voices Peter, Brian, Stewie and Quagmire, and the range is real. Peter is a wheezing bray; Brian a dry, level baritone; Stewie a clipped English gentleman of about 1955 who happens to be one year old. Alex Borstein gives Lois a nasal patience that cracks roughly once an episode, and the cracks are the best thing about her. Mila Kunis plays Meg as a girl who has stopped expecting to be heard, which starts as a good joke and turns cruel: the family tell her to shut up, and worse, every week, and the writers stopped finding anything new in it long ago. Seth Green makes Chris slow and cheerful. Patrick Warburton’s Joe Swanson, a bellowing policeman in a wheelchair, has one register and uses it well. The best of it is Stewie and Brian. A baby with a death ray and a dog with an unfinished novel should not be the emotional centre of anything, and here they are. When the show gives them an episode to themselves it slows down, the cutaways thin out and something like a story turns up, with an ending that has been earned rather than reached. Those are the episodes we would send a stranger to. They also prove that MacFarlane and his writers can hold a scene for longer than a minute. Most weeks they choose not to. Nobody has ever paused a frame of *Family Guy* to admire it. The characters share the same round shoulders and absent chins, the backgrounds are a suburban colour chart, and the animation moves people from A to B and no further. The exception is the sound. Walter Murphy and Ron Jones score the show with a full orchestra, brass and strings playing as if for a 1960s film musical, and the theme has the family at a piano promising a far grander programme than the one that follows. The orchestra is playing for a better show than the one on screen, on purpose, and it is the one thing here we never tired of. There is a gap of nearly four years between the third season in 2001 and the fourth in 2005, and the show that came back was faster, ruder and surer of itself. It has not changed much since. Twenty-four seasons is a long time to run on one trick, and the recent years have the timing down cold and less and less underneath it; the show now makes jokes about its own cutaways, which is funny once. Set against *The Simpsons* at its best it looks thin, and it has outlasted most of what copied it. Watch it late, with a drink, three episodes at a time and no more, which is how it was built to be watched. Go to the Brian and Stewie episodes if you want to see what MacFarlane can do, and to anything else if you want to see what he usually does. It carries a 15, and it means it. *Fi1m score 63, published 16 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (2) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Barry Garron (75/100, inferred): The critic praises the show as bright, entertaining, often witty and warm, with plenty of laughs and strong voice work, though the animation is unmemorable and the story can feel gag-driven. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/family-guy-review-season-1-1235811391/) - **Variety**, Ray Richmond (65/100, inferred): The critic calls the series undeniably clever and occasionally uproarious but finds it too often relies on a frenzy of gags without proper setup, making it absurd and unlikely to fully appeal to Simpsons fans. [Read](https://variety.com/1999/tv/reviews/family-guy-1200456376/) ## Details - **Created by:** Seth MacFarlane - **Creator:** Seth MacFarlane - **Director:** Peter Shin, Pete Michels, John Holmquist, Greg Colton, Brian Iles, Julius Wu, Jerry Langford, Joseph Lee, Joe Vaux, Mike Kim, Steve Robertson, James Purdum, Dan Povenmire, Cyndi Tang, Dominic Bianchi, Dominic Polcino, Bob Bowen, Zac Moncrief, Michael Dante DiMartino, Bert Ring, Sarah Frost, Monte Young, Scott Wood, Brian Hogan, Glen Hill, Chuck Klein, Kurt Dumas, Joseph Lee, Gavin Dell, Seth Kearsley, Rob Renzetti, Neil Affleck, Anthony Agrusa, Jack Dyer, Roy Allen Smith, Swinton O. Scott III, Andi Klein, Peter Chinn, Seth MacFarlane, Bob Jaques, David A. Goodman, Jeff Myers - **Writer:** Steve Callaghan, Patrick Meighan, Mark Hentemann, Artie Johann, Chris Sheridan, Alex Carter, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Tom Devanney, Danny Smith, Travis Bowe, Gary Janetti, Wellesley Wild, Alec Sulkin, Andrew Goldberg, Mike Desilets, Damien Fahey, Anthony Blasucci, Matt Weitzman, John Viener, Mike Barker, Kirker Butler, David A. Goodman, Chris Regan, Julius Sharpe, Kevin Biggins, Ted Jessup, Shawn Ries, Mike Henry, Matt McElaney, Matt Pabian, Brian Scully, Aaron Lee, Evan Waite, Ricky Blitt, Neil Goldman, Emily Towers, Alex Borstein, Garrett Donovan, Mike Desilets, David Wright, David Ihlenfeld, Craig Hoffman, Poliana Diaz, Maggie Mull, Ken Goin, Seth MacFarlane, Teresa Hsiao, Spencer Porter, Charlie Hankin, Alex Carter, Gene Laufenberg, Kristin Long, Matt Fleckenstein, Ray James, Michael Shipley, David Collard, Joe Vaux, Dominic Bianchi, Daniel Palladino, Daniel Peck, Matt Porter, Jim Bernstein, Lewis Morton, David Zuckerman, Dave Willis, Joanna Quraishi, Billy Domineau, Jaydi Samuels, Mike Desilets, Bobby Bowman, Richard Appel, Michael Rowe, Steve Marmel, Deepak Sethi, Kevin Baggins, Hillman Hollister, Patrick Henry, Marc Firek, Matt Harrigan, Jordan Ramp, Hayes Davenport, Jack Stovitz, Don Woodard, Tom Maxwell, Alex Barnow, Allison Adler, Maggie Muller - **Music:** Ron Jones, Walter Murphy - **Producer:** Shannon Smith, Kara Vallow, Kirker Butler - **Cast:** Seth MacFarlane as Peter Griffin / Brian Griffin / Stewie Griffin / Glenn Quagmire (voice); Alex Borstein as Lois Griffin / Tricia Takanawa / Loretta Brown / Barbara Pewterschmidt (voice); Mila Kunis as Meg Griffin (voice); Seth Green as Chris Griffin (voice); Arif Zahir as Cleveland Brown (voice); Patrick Warburton as Joe Swanson as Imperial Probe Droid (voice); Mike Henry as Additional Voices (voice); Waylon Jennings as Waylon Jennings (voice) - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-14 - **Release (the US):** 31 January 1999 - **Genres:** Animation, Comedy ## Where to watch in the US - Hulu: streaming - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Disney+: add-on, sd - Apple TV: buy, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HR, HU, IE, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Simpsons* (1989): Where the family sitcom cartoon started; the jokes arrive from the story, not instead of it. - *South Park* (1997): Cruder, faster, and usually angry about something specific, which helps. - *Monkey Dust* (2003): British, bleaker, and drawn in a different style for every strand. - *Bob's Burgers* (2011): The same set-up, a struggling father and odd children, played with affection instead of contempt. - *BoJack Horseman* (2014): A talking animal who drinks, and a show that takes the drinking seriously. --- © 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/family-guy