Heathcliff (Cats & Co.)

Heathcliff (a.k.a. Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats, known as Les Entrechats in French) is a French-Canadian-American animated television series that debuted on September 5, 1984. It was the second series based on the Heathcliff comic strip and was produced by DIC Audiovisuel. It ran in syndication until 1986 with a total of 86 episodes. The first show based on the comic strip was Heathcliff and Dingbat/Heathcliff and Marmaduke, which debuted in 1980 and was produced by Ruby-Spears. The Catillac Cats characters were created by Jean Chalopin and Bruno Bianchi. Animation was outsourced to many Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean studios including TMS, Studio Korumi, Wang Film, Cuckoo's Nest, Mushi and others for the first season before DIC utilized their own, private Japanese studio to avoid paying other companies.

Mel Blanc, who provided the voice of Heathcliff in the 1980 series, reprised his role as the titular cat.

Premise
The first season ran for 65 episodes while the second season ran for 21. Each episode featured two segments, one being about Heathcliff and his friends, while the other featured The Catillac Cats.

While the series was on the air, the movie Heathcliff: The Movie, was released which was a compilation of segments.

Voices

 * Mel Blanc — Heathcliff
 * Donna Christie — Cleo, Iggy
 * Jeannie Elias — Marcy, Willie
 * Stanley Jones — Riff-Raff, Wordsworth, Milkman
 * Marilyn Lightstone - Sonja, Grandma
 * Danny Mann — Hector, Fish Market Proprietor
 * Derek McGrath — Knuckles, Muggsy, Spike
 * Danny Wells — Bush, Raul
 * Ted Zeigler — Leroy, Mungo, Grandpa

Theme song
The theme was composed and written by Shuki Levy and Haim Saban and sung by Noam Kaniel.

Broadcast history
In the United States, the series was aired in national first-run syndication from September 5, 1984 until 1986, and reruns of the series were then aired on Nickelodeon from 1988 until 1993. It was rerun on Family Channel from 1993-1998 and Fox Family Channel from 1998 until 1999. From September 27, 2010 until September 23, 2011, reruns of the series were aired in the United States on the This Is for Kids block on This TV. In the U.K. the series aired on CBBC during the late 1980s and early 1990s, then it was repeated on Channel 4 until 1996, then in the early 2000s it was aired on Toon Disney. In the early 2000s, the show was aired in syndication in North American local channels in 2000, and was usually billed under the title Heathcliff Cats & Co. The series also aired in Japan. The series was aired weekdays on Starz Encore Family (as of 2016) and Light TV (as of October 6, 2018). It was also broadcast in Colombia through the digital channel Tacho Pistacho until the channel's shutdown in 2019.

According to an interview with Donna Christie, the voice for Iggy Nutmeg and Cleo, the series did not continue because of Mel Blanc's failing health.

Home media
In the 1980's, the series was released on VHS from RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video and Golden Book Video.

In February 2004, Sterling Entertainment released two VHS/DVD released titled Terror of the Neighborhood and Fish Tales, each featuring six Heathcliff segments and a Catillac Cats segment. The DVD versions featured two additional Catillac Cats segments. On May 25, 2004, Sterling released Heathcliff: The Movie on DVD.

In 2004, General Mills offered free DVDs in select cereals with assorted cartoons, some of which had Heathcliff episodes on them.

In the UK, Maximum Entertainment released two volumes of the series in 2004. The first DVD/VHS contained 5 episodes, while the other DVD contained 3. A third one, released in 2008, contained 5 more episodes.

On September 20, 2005, Shout! Factory and Sony BMG Music Entertainment released Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats in a 4-disc boxset featuring the first 24 episodes of the series in its original, complete and uncut television broadcast form. Shout! Factory has lost the rights to the series.

Throughout 2007-2009, NCircle Entertainment released eight Heathcliff DVDs.

On February 21, 2012, Mill Creek Entertainment released Heathcliff- Season One, Volume 1 on DVD. This 3-disc set features the first 32 episodes from the Season 1. They also released a 10 episode best-of collection on that same day. Heathcliff- Season 1, Volume 2 was released on October 1, 2013, which contains the remaining 33 episodes from Season 1.

On August 2, 2016, Mill Creek released Heathcliff - The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1. The 9-disc set contains all 86 episodes of the series, including the final 21 episodes which were previously unreleased.

The episode "Going Shopping / Cat in the Fat" was included as a bonus in the DVD release of the first half of the Beverly Hills Teens series.

In France, two more 4-disc sets were released under the French title of the series, Les Entrechats.

Streaming
On August 8, 2019, CBS announced that it had signed a deal to add Heathcliff along with other DHX Media programming to its CBS All Access streaming service.

Movie
Heathcliff: The Movie was released to theaters on January 17, 1986, and subsequently on VHS in 1988 by Paramount Video. It includes seven segments from the original show:


 * Cat Food for Thought
 * Heathcliff's Double
 * The Siamese Twins
 * An Officer and an Alley Cat
 * The Catfather
 * Boom Boom Pussini
 * Pop on Parole