South Park
The construction-paper kids from Colorado who never stopped talking. South Park arrived in 1997 as basic cable's biggest shock — then spent the 2000s proving it was television's fastest satire machine, with episodes built in days so it could mock the news while it was still news.
Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park grew out of two crude animated shorts called "The Spirit of Christmas" — the second, from 1995, became one of the earliest viral videos, passed around on tape and over the nascent internet. The series premiered on Comedy Central on August 13, 1997 and exploded on arrival: by its tenth episode it was pulling a 6.4 rating, more than ten times the average for prime-time cable, and the June 1999 film "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" earned an Academy Award nomination.
What kept it from burning out as a shock-value craze was speed. Episodes are built in about a week — some in as little as three or four days — which let Parker and Stone respond to the news while it was still news; in 2000, one episode aired just four days after the real event it referenced. Across the 2000s that velocity turned the show from crude outsider into the decade's sharpest satire institution, collecting five Primetime Emmys and a Peabody Award along the way.
It never stopped, either — the show is still running and has been renewed through 2027. But the era it defines is the one when Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny were a school-hallway password.
Similar items
Family Guy
The Griffin family of Quahog, Rhode Island—led by bumbling dad Peter, his wife Lois, and their motley crew of kids and pets—became a Fox phenomenon after its Super Bowl XXXIII premiere in 1999. A sharp departure from typical sitcom fare, Family Guy was built on rapid-fire cutaway gags and irreverent humor. Though Fox canceled it after just three seasons, a DVD renaissance in 2003 became so successful it sparked a network reversal—the show's comeback is considered television's first revival based on DVD sales.
![Video thumbnail — [Adult Swim] 2001 Pool Bumps](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hoWcIE8VRMI/hqdefault.jpg)
Adult Swim
Cartoon Network's late-night block launched in 2001 as a joke about pool rules — and became a proving ground for surreal, irreverent animation that refused to fit anywhere else. Deadpan bumpers over footage of elderly swimmers announced shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Harvey Birdman to an audience that had grown up with the network and wasn't ready to turn in.
Chappelle's Show
The sketch show that owned the mid-2000s. Dave Chappelle's Comedy Central juggernaut turned razor-sharp racial satire and absurd characters into the most-quoted comedy of the decade — "I'm Rick James, b****!" echoing down every school hallway.
Futurama
Delivery boy Fry cryogenically freezes and wakes in the year 3000 to join a space-shipping crew led by the sardonic Leela and foul-mouthed robot Bender. Created by Matt Groening, this sci-fi comedy was staffed with Ph.D.s—the writers brought genuine math-smart humor and surprising emotional depth. Fox premiered it in 1999, but it became a cult phenomenon on Comedy Central; episodes like 'Jurassic Bark' showed its tearjerking side, and it won six Emmy Awards over its life.