‘Squidbillies,’ the new Flash-animated series from the Williams Street team, premiered last night on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It’s a fast-moving, highly-entertaining romp through the mountains of Georgia, where a giant, man eating snake lives next door to a squids. While the animation is simple, the gritty, hand-drawn character line work set against the almost sloppily painted backgrounds give the show a refreshing and new look.

The opening title cards of the first episode walk us through the ‘Squidbillies’ development stage.

SQUIDBILLIES PRODUCTION TIMELINE
“Squid” and “hillbillies” combined to make “Squidbillies”
Pilot made
Pilot revised
New Pilot made with 6 producers
(The number ’6′ then counts down to ’2′)
We like it!
Greenlit to Series
6 episodes ordered
20 episodes ordered
(the number ’20′ then counts down to 16)

Can’t say I’ve seen a show that recounted the rocky road it took to get to air even before a frame of animation goes by. Very clever.

‘Squidbillies’ feels like a late-nite, animation mixture of ‘Mr. Show’ and the Coen Brothers’ classic film ‘Raising Arizona,’ complete with what appears to be an homage to Nick Cage’s character – the show lead is named ‘Early’ Cuyler. And the humor is on par with ‘Arizona.’ In the first episode, titled ‘This Show is Called Squidbillies,’ the sheriff is in Early’s house getting a haircut, and he confronts Early’s sister, Lil, about what appears to be a moonshine rig:

SHERIFF
Did you know that moonshine is illegal here in this county?

LIL
Oh, that’s just my meth lab.

And Early’s mom, Granny, is confined to a home, but comes correct with unrestrained dialogue:

GRANNY
It’s God’s honest truth. When Jesus was president, he ate babies all the time.

It all goes by extremely fast, like most Adult Swim shows, so it’s almost imperative to watch this show repeatedly. You don’t want to miss Early’s sexual passion for pumpkins, the Space Baby, Early’s ‘Breathe if You’re Horny’ hat or the title cards at the end of the show that explain how graphic sex made it into the first episode.

If you missed last night’s show, you can check out a clip from an episode at the Adult Swim site.

(UPDATE – AWN posted an article stating a September release of ‘Squidbillies.’ Six episodes are reportedly on tap.)

You may already know that the ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force‘ creators, Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro have been hard at work preparing a theatrical version of ‘ATHF.’ But what you may not know is that this same duo has been called upon to create a second original show for Adult Swim – ‘Squidbillies.’ This project has actually been in the works (first announced in March 2004) for quite some time, but all signs point to a July 2005 release for this Flash-animated show set in the North Georgia mountains.

A ‘Squidbillies’ pilot aired back in November 2004, and you can get a glimpse of the show’s unique look by downloading two promo clips from the Adult Swim Fruitcake site. The loose, folk-art background style looks amazing, and the character design seems like a mixture of refrigerator art and ‘Beavis and Butthead.’

The original announcement at the 2004 upfronts gave the following synopsis of the show:

Five million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean covered North America all the way to the Ohio Valley. As the ocean receded to form our present-day geography, a family of squids was stranded in a remote setting in the North Georgia mountains. This motley melange of mischievous mollusks, influenced by the rural ways of the redneck locals, quickly “adapticise” to a world of fighting, feuding and fornicating with a Faulknerian flambé of ferocious sea creature livin’. The humor lies in the “adapticization.”