King Of The Hill Team Explains Why Hulu's Revival Aged Up Its Characters (And What's Staying The Same)
Hulu is bringing back the animated classic King of the Hill — and it may look a little different than you remember.
Unlike The Simpsons, where Bart remains a grade-school prankster forever, King of the Hill decided to age up its characters for Hulu's revival — premiering Monday, Aug. 4 — with Hank and Peggy's son Bobby all grown up and Hank's friend Boomhauer sporting a few new wrinkles. (The original Fox run wrapped up back in 2009.) So why did they decide to bring the good people of Arlen into the future?
"What you always have to answer when you bring something back," showrunner Saladin Patterson tells TVLine, "is the 'why now?' question. Why bring it back?" So co-creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels "came up with the great idea of: 'Well, if we're going to bring it back, let's do something unique.'"
That means we catch up with Hank as he and Peggy return to Arlen after several years living abroad in Saudi Arabia. (They love propane almost as much as Hank does over there.) Bobby is living on his own and working as a chef at a Japanese restaurant, and Hank is forced to contend with new annoyances like Zoom calls and Uber drivers. The characters we know so well are "experiencing a new phase of life," Patterson adds, "and that gave us all a little injection of energy in terms of being excited to revisit these characters."
Now Hank does have some familiarity with the modern world, Patterson emphasizes: "It's not like he was in a cave. So most modern conveniences and things, he was aware of... It's not as much Hank not knowing how a cell phone works. It's more Hank being frustrated that we use cell phones for things we shouldn't use cell phones for."
Hank and his pals all deal with this new phase of life in their own unique way, Toby Huss (who takes over the voice of Dale for the late Johnny Hardwick) notes: "Hank is a guy who watches the world change and questions it, and then sometimes steps into that change. And Dale is a guy who sees the change in the world, does not believe the change in the world, and believes that he knows the real reason the world is changing. Everybody has their own take on how the world changes, and how their character fits into it."
But some things never change, as Lauren Tom (who voices Minh and Connie) notes: "You get to see the characters you know in different situations now, in the modern world. But what has stayed the same is there's a certain sweetness and kindness and authenticity from the original that I think the new one retains."