Futurama is an Emmy Award-winning animated American sitcom created by Matt Groening, and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox network. The series follows the adventures of a former New York pizza delivery boy, Philip J. Fry, after he is cryogenically frozen, seconds after the start of the twenty-first century, and wakes up in the year 3000.

In the United States, the series aired from March 28, 1999 to August 10, 2003 on Fox before ceasing production. Futurama was then aired on Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, from January 2003 to December 2007, when the network's contract expired. The series was revived in 2007 as four straight-to-DVD films which would then be split into a sixteen-episode fifth season. Comedy Central entered into an agreement with 20th Century Fox Television to syndicate the existing episodes and air the films as new episodes in an episodic format. Comedy Central began airing Futurama on January 2, 2008, with new episodes starting on March 23, 2008.

The name "Futurama" comes from a pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Designed by Norman Bel Geddes, the Futurama pavilion depicted how he imagined the world to look in 1959.

Cast and characters

Futurama is essentially a workplace sitcom whose plot revolves around the Planet Express delivery company and its employees, a small group that doesn't conform to future society. Episodes invariably feature the central trio of Fry, Leela and Bender, though storylines centered on the other main characters are common.

Philip J. Fry (Billy West): Philip J. Fry is an immature, slovenly pizza delivery boy who is frozen just after midnight on January 1, 2000, reawakening on New Year's Eve, 2999. He gets a job as a cargo delivery boy at Planet Express, a company owned by his closest living relative, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Though he is dim-witted and accident-prone, he has some redeeming characteristics, including his love of Leela. Fry is, through actions which he takes in the episode "Roswell That Ends Well", his own grandfather.

Turanga Leela (Katey Sagal): Leela is the competent, one-eyed captain of the Planet Express Ship. Abandoned as a baby, she grew up in an Orphanarium believing herself to be an alien from an unknown race. She later learns that she is actually a mutant from the sewers. She used to work as a career assignment officer at the cryonics lab where she first met Fry. She acts as Fry's primary love interest.

Bender Bending Rodríguez (John DiMaggio): Bender is a heavy drinking, cigar-smoking, kleptomaniac, misanthropic, egocentric, ill-tempered robot, originally programmed to bend girders for suicide booths, and is now assistant sales manager of Planet Express. He is Fry's best friend and roommate. He is also known to have deep desires to be a folk singer or a chef. Bender is also the chef of the Planet Express Ship.

Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth (Billy West): Roughly 168 years old, Professor Hubert Farnsworth is Fry's distant nephew and closest living relative. Farnsworth founded Planet Express to fund his mad scientist-esque experiments and inventions. At some point in the series, he clones himself to create a successor, Cubert Farnsworth, whom he treats like a son.

Dr. John A. Zoidberg (Billy West): Zoidberg is a lobster-like alien from the planet Decapod 10 and is the neurotic staff physician of Planet Express. Although he claims to be an expert on humans, his knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is woefully inadequate. Zoidberg is basically penniless and held in contempt by virtually all. Fry is his only friend as he claims. He is stricken with poverty and often goes into weeping about it.

Amy Wong (Lauren Tom): Amy is an incredibly rich, blunt, spoiled, and extremely accident-prone long-term intern at Planet Express. She is an engineering student at Mars University and heir to the western hemisphere of Mars. Though born on Mars, she is ethnically Chinese, prone to frequently cursing in Cantonese, and overuses 31st century slang. Her parents are the wealthy ranchers Leo and Inez Wong. Although initially portrayed as somewhat promiscuous, she eventually develops a relationship with Kif Kroker.

Hermes Conrad (Phil LaMarr): Hermes is the Jamaican accountant of Planet Express. A 37th level bureaucrat and proud of it, he is a stickler for regulation. Hermes is also a former champion in Olympic Limbo, a sport derived from the popular dance and similar to the track event of hurdling. He quit limbo when he was heartbroken at the 2980 Olympics, where a kid who tried to be like him, bent too far, broke his back and subsequently died from his injuries. He has a wife, LaBarbara, and a 12-year-old son, Dwight.

Zapp Brannigan (Billy West): Zapp Brannigan is not a member of the Planet Express crew, but appears regularly in Futurama. He is a strutting, egocentric, sleazy and incompetent starship captain, who pursues Leela relentlessly, following her misguided sexual encounter with him in an early episode.

Kif Kroker (Maurice LaMarche): Zapp Brannigan's 3rd Lieutenant/long-suffering assistant, and Amy's partner since season 3, Kif is a member of the amphibious species which inhabits the aptly-named planet Amphibios 9. Although usually extremely timid, he frequently expresses resentment and spiteful sarcasm toward Zapp.

Nibbler (Frank Welker): Nibbler is Leela's pet Nibblonian, whom she found in the wild and adopted early in the series. He is capable of eating much larger animals, and produces dark matter (spaceship fuel) as a waste product. Although apparently only an animal, Nibbler is actually a highly intelligent superbeing whose race is responsible for maintaining order in the universe. He is revealed in "The Why of Fry" to have been directly responsible for Fry's cryonic freezing.