LazyTown

LazyTown started as a 1995 Icelandic storybook, "Áfram Latibær!" ("Go Go LazyTown!"), written by aerobics champion Magnús Scheving — who then turned it into stage plays in 1996 and 1999. The 1999 production introduced Stefán Karl Stefánsson as the villain Robbie Rotten. When the show finally migrated to television, Scheving made an unusual choice: a hybrid of live actors and puppets, with himself starring as Sportacus, the impossibly athletic hero elf.

Nick Jr. premiered LazyTown in the US on August 16, 2004, and the gamble paid off — its premiere week was the network's highest-rated in three years, and an August 2005 primetime special drew three million viewers. The premise was nothing if not direct: Sportacus and pink-haired Stephanie work to get kids off the couch while Robbie Rotten schemes to keep the town lazy. The budget became legendary — the per-episode cost ran over five times that of the average children's show, and Scheving himself called it the most expensive children's show in the world. The original run ended in 2007, with a later revival bringing the total to 78 episodes.

Nearly a decade on, LazyTown found an unexpected second life: "We Are Number One," a villain song composed by Máni Svavarsson for a 2014 episode, exploded into an internet meme in late 2016 — much of it a wave of fan support for Stefán Karl, who had been diagnosed with cancer. He died in 2018 at 43, mourned by a generation that had made his villain song an anthem.