Cavemen | |
---|---|
Created by | Joe Lawson |
Starring |
Bill English Nick Kroll Sam Huntington Kaitlin Doubleday Jeff Daniel Phillips |
Theme music composer |
Mickey Petralia Jude Christodal |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 13(list of episodes) |
Production | |
Camera setup | Single-camera |
Running time | 30 minutes |
Production company(s) | Double Vision Productions Television 360 ABC Studios |
Distributor | Disney–ABC Domestic Television |
Release | |
Original network | ABC |
Original release | October 2 | – November 13, 2007
Cavemen is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from October 2 to November 13, 2007. The show was created by Joe Lawson and set in San Diego, California. Based on the GEICO Cavemen commercials, which were also written by Lawson, the show was described by the network as a "unique buddy comedy that offers a clever twist on stereotypes and turns race relations on its head".
In the series, cavemen were never really fully supplanted by modern humans, but integrated into Homo sapiens civilization as a separate species sub-group. Cavemen are a small but widespread minority group that have been present in every global civilization since the dawn of recorded history (a montage scene in the opening credits shows Cavemen in Egyptian hieroglyphs, when George Washington crossed the Delaware River, standing with Abraham Lincoln, participating in the space program, etc.). Effectively, Cavemen form another ethnic minority in the modern world, which faces several prejudices from Homo sapiens (sometimes referring to humans by the derogatory term "Smoothies" in reference to their relative lack of hair, or "Sapes" in reference to their species). Although these cavemen self-identify as Cro-Magnon, their facial appearance and physical anatomy is reminiscent of the Neanderthal. (In reality, Cro-Magnon were Homo Sapiens.) The writer and producers clearly intended to portray the protagonists as (or like) Homo neanderthalensis, which is anatomically different from modern humans, but sufficiently closely related that they are not always classed as a separate species.
Cavemen have prominent brow ridges and more body hair than Homo sapiens, but beyond superficial differences in appearance they actually are not that much different from modern humans in terms of behavior or physical abilities. Male Cavemen are very hairy, have thick long beards and wear their head-hair shoulder-length. A Cavewoman that appeared on the show also had a prominent brow ridge and comparatively more body hair than a modern human female. Some Cavemen attempt to pass as Homo sapiens by shaving their body hair - other Cavemen call them "shavers". The central humor of the show is that Caveman characters are not brutish primitives, but fully integrated into white-collar jobs; the central Cavemen characters are effete modern city-dwellers. They must also endure racial epithets such as "Magger", a pun based on "Cro-Magnon".