Henry Normal mulls the lack of adult cartoons on British TV

It is the most popular genre of comedy - but one British broadcasters have been reluctant to embrace.

Despite the global success of shows such as The Simpsons and Family Guy, there is almost no UK animated comedy. Now Henry Normal, one of the country's top comedy producers as head of production house Baby Cow, is trying to change that.

His company's new series, Warren United, is currently being screened on ITV4 – a channel not normally known for breaking new comedy. But even though its football theme should appeal to their predominantly male audience, Normal said it had been a struggle to get the show on air.

'Broadcasters are not keen on animated comedies,' he said. 'And I can't think of anyone else who is making animated narrative series in this country.'

He also said there was resistance to making a comedy about football, despite the ratings success of high-profile matches. 'We’re definitely trying something unusual,' he conceded.

Animation has certainly not has successful time on British TV. A decade or so there was a flurry of activity, when ITV ran four series of the 2DTV (whose animator Tim Searle now works on Warren United) and the similarly topical Headcases a few years later.

Around the same time was was the dark Monkey Dust on BBC Three, Channel 4's school-based Bromwell High and Popetown, which proved too controversial for BBC Three, and was never aired.

The only real hit of recent years has been the animated version of Mr Bean, proving a hit with Rowan Atkinson's global audience and aimed at children rather than adults. And the latest attempt to make an adult animated comedy was Channel 4's family sitcom Full English, which starred Richard Ayoade, but that only lasted one series in 2012.

Certainly Warren United, which revolves around a 37-year-old kitchen salesman and fan of the perpetually struggling Brainsford United – has been a long time coming to the screen. Executive producer Bill Freedman, formerly a West End theatre producer and owner, has more than eight years working on it.

Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, who wrote the episodes with David Quantick and Dominic Holland, said he's enjoyed working in animation: 'You've got more freedom to do fancy stuff, like talking horses. It's fun to explore the medium... there's lots of things you can do in animation that you can't do in real life...'

But Normal acknowledged that there are particular challenges with the genre, too.

'You have to pack a lot more jokes in,' he said. 'Because the images are relatively simple, your brain takes them in quicker and concentrates on the dialogue. We've tried to pack in lots of little visual jokes to counter that, but you don't want to overwhelm viewers either.'

He also acknowledged that animations might also face a tough time with reviewers and viewers quick to judge... even though the professional critical reaction to Warren United has so far been a cautious welcome.

'The minute you make an animation, you are instantly going to get compared to the best and most successful animated sitcom in the world,' he said, referring to The Simpsons. 'That can be unfair, as many animations work as great shows in their own right, even if they are not The Simpsons. And they have long passed their 500th episode, so there's a lot of affection for the characters in that, which you can't instantly create.'

Normal said one reason for animation's relative dearth on British TV was that broadcasters were wrongly afraid that the show could prove too expensive to produce. 'We've delivered Warren United to ITV4 for under £50,000 for each half-hour show – that's a fraction of the cost of a live-action comedy for BBC Two,' he said.

The cost was kept down using Canadian animators – where tax breaks are available – and looking at international distribution deals. But there are problems in using a foreign animators, in this case Smiley Guy Studios in Toronto.

'I was watching one scene and there were fire hydrants in the street,' Normal said. 'And sometimes in the crowd, the fans somehow look Canadian.

'The thing with animation is that in every scene you are making 100 choices. We drew the main characters here, but every time you add a detail in the background, every time you add a face in the crowd, there are decisions to be made that affect the look of the show. And if I'm being critical, I think Warren United might sometimes look a little too Canadian.'

But he says he was left with very little choice but to outsource the animation. 'There aren't any adult-orientated animation studios in the UK any more,' he said, although there are studios such as Aardman, which focusses on stop-motion, and a couple making children's shows. 'There's nowhere where there are 300 animators waiting to work on a late-night show who I can call up,' he said.

The UK could become a more attractive place to make such shows in the future, however, as a new tax break for the animation industry was introduced on April 1.

And if Warren United goes to a second series, it could become cheaper to make yet. 'First series are always the most expensive,' Normal explains. 'Because you have to animate every small movement for the first time. But by series two you've built up a library of these, so the software then becomes a lot quicker.'

Warren United is not Baby Cow's first step in animation. As long ago as 2004, they made I Am Not An Animal with Peter Baynham, who would go on to write Borat with Sacha Baron Cohen. Set in a vivisection lab, Normal says: 'That series was probably too complicated both visually ad script wise.'

And in 2012 the company made two seasonal shorts – Uncle Wormsley’s Christmas, voiced by Julia Davis and Baby Cow's co-owner Steve Coogan,and The Cow that Almost Missed Christmas, voiced by Isy Suttie and Johnny Vegas. And if Normal has his way, this won't be the last either...

• Warren United is on ITV4 at 10pm on Tuesdays. The previous episodes are available to view on ITV Player.

Published: 13 May 2014