21 Shows To Watch While You’re Recovering From A Food Coma

Harvey Birdman and the Jetsons (Image via Cartoon Network/Adult Swim)

8. Harvey Birdman

Harvey Birdman is the ultimate in silly television consumption. It’s probably for the best if you simply left the show move along without focusing in on pesky questions about plot or characterization. What could be better for someone currently digesting a large Thanksgiving meal, anyway?

The show is based off a Hanna-Barbera show from the late 1960s called Birdman and the Galaxy Trio. Like many of the shows created by the Hanna-Barbera production company, the animation was cheap and the storylines were pretty hackneyed. The original Birdman was little more than a throwaway cartoon superhero, if we’re being brutally honest.

The 2000 Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law series took the character to another level, however. In this iteration, which ran until 2007, Birdman is now an attorney at the Sebben and Sebben Law Firm. While he still wears a mask, he’s also decked out in a standard suit. Though he often has to deal with his superhero past, Harvey Birdman is more likely to be managing a libel case than punching a villain.

Many of the other partners and clients at the firm are based off other Hanna-Barbera characters as well. Select members of the Scooby Doo gang, for instance, get a kind of character makeover.

Gary Cole starred as the title character, but you may be a little more familiar with some of the other voices on the show. Stephen Colbert plays both Phil Sebben, the insane head of the firm, and Dr. Myron Reducto, a paranoid villain who has now become a prosecutor. Peter MacNicol (Ghostbusters II, Addams Family Values, Sophie’s Choice) provided the voice for Birdman’s kind-of arch nemesis, X the Eliminator.

Where to watch: Hulu