This Is America, Charlie Brown

This Is America, Charlie Brown
Genre
  • Documentary
  • Animated television special
  • Adventure
  • Comedy
  • Drama
  • Historical
  • Family
Created byCharles M. Schulz
Written by
Directed byBill Melendez
Sam Jaimes
Evert Brown
Sam Nicholson
Starring
  • Erin Chase
  • Jason Riffle
  • Erica Gayle
  • Ami Foster
  • Brittany M. Thornton
  • Christina Lange
  • Brandon Stewart
  • Jeremy Miller
  • Jason Muller
  • Marie Cole
  • Tani Taylor Powers
  • Keri Houlihan
  • Curtis Andersen
  • Hakeem Abdul-Samad
  • Grant Gelt
  • Bill Melendez
Theme music composer
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes8
Production
ProducersLee Mendelson
Bill Melendez
CinematographyNick Vasu
EditorsGordon D. Brenner
Chuck McCann
Warren Taylor
Running time25 minutes
Production companies
Original release
NetworkCBS
ReleaseOctober 21, 1988 (1988-10-21) 
May 23, 1989 (1989-05-23)
Related

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. 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.

Due to the nature of the events portrayed and the historical figures included — such as the Wright Brothers and George Washington — 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. 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.

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, then included in the Nickelodeon series You're on Nickelodeon, Charlie Brown between 1998 and 2003. A slightly abridged version of "The Mayflower Voyagers" returned to television in 2008 as companion material to pad the 1973 special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving to a full one-hour time slot, airing in that arrangement until 2019, after which Apple TV+ withdrew the entire Peanuts filmography from traditional television (the airings of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving sublicensed to PBS in 2020 and 2021 did not feature "The Mayflower Voyagers," since the excision of commercials allowed the older special to fit in a half-hour slot).