‘King of the Hill' 2025 review: New season proves this animated gem is one 90s TV show actually worth reviving

Irish Independent

17 hours ago

Ideally, this and the axing in January of Paramount's mediocre Frasier should be the final nails in the coffin of the 90s TV revival craze.
All that being said, welcome back King of the Hill (Disney+, streaming now). It's great to see you again after all this time, and looking great too.
The animated sitcom created by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-head) and Greg Daniels (The Simpsons, The Office, Parks and Recreation) originally ran from 1997 to 2009 and was a cult favourite.
Near the end, despite good ratings, its original broadcaster, Fox, seemed to lose interest and dumped the final four episodes into syndication.
Set in the fictional Texas city of Arlen, King of the Hill focused on mild-mannered beer- and football-loving propane salesman Hank Hill (voiced by Judge), his wife Peggy (Kathy Najimy) – a substitute teacher who's bursting with confidence, yet sometimes deficient in the self-awareness department – their 12-year-old son and only child Bobby (Pamela Adlon), who shares none of his father's interests, along with a large cast of friends, neighbours and incidental characters.
Even when it started, King of the Hill was a bit of an outlier. It didn't have the glorious puerility of Beavis and Butt-head, the surreal satire of The Simpsons or the politically engaged, boundary-smashing, near-the-knuckle outrageousness of South Park.
If you had to sum it up in a few words, they would be warm, big-hearted and gentle – although not in the way 'gentle' is often used as code for 'not very funny'.
King of the Hill was always very funny. The humour came from the small things, the mundane details and minor frustrations of everyday life. It also paddled against TV comedy's political tide.
Hank was – and still is in the new episodes – a Republican, but he's also a member of a vanishing species: the moderate conservative who prefers to consider other viewpoints rather than condemn them.
The current fractious political climate is the ideal time to bring King of the Hill back to television, and Judge, Daniels and new showrunner Saladin Patterson (The Wonder Years) handle the return seamlessly.
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The new season starts with Hank and Peggy returning to Arlen after several years in Saudi Arabia – or 'Saw-die Arabia', as Peggy says it.
As their plane descends, Hank is in the toilet, struggling to empty his bladder, while a disgruntled queue forms at the door. Peggy loudly announces to the other passengers that her husband has a narrow urethra.
'Doctors say he now has the urethra of a seven-year-old,' she booms. 'Every year, that skinny little tube just shrinks and shrinks.'
'Don't share that, Peggy!' wails Hank from the other side of the door.
He's flummoxed by taxi apps, all-gender toilets, hybrid cars, bicycle lanes
Hank is bewildered at how things have changed while they've been away. 'Are we still in Amsterdam?' he wonders, marvelling at all the trendy stores and eateries that have popped up all over Arlen. 'What kind of food is poke?'
He's flummoxed by taxi apps, all-gender toilets, hybrid cars, bicycle lanes. A different comedy might have gone down the route of having Hank rail angrily against modern life.
Instead, he handles everything in his uniquely Hank way: initial puzzlement followed by a kind of 'Oh, well' shrug of acceptance.
Unlike other animated sitcoms, King of the Hill marks the passage of time. Twelve-year-old Bobby is now 21-year-old Bobby, the part-owner and chef of a restaurant offering 'a traditional Japanese barbecue with a fusion of flavours and techniques from the German traditions of the Texas Hill Country'. Quite a mouthful.
King of the Hill rings the changes in the political climate without making your ears bleed.
Trump is never mentioned. Everything is addressed obliquely, using Hank's neighbour Dale Gribble (Toby Huss).
Always a right-winger, Dale seems to have gone full wingnut.
He was elected mayor, but served for just 36 hours after refusing to accept his own victory: 'I was an election-election denier.'
If only the compassion of King of the Hill was to be found on Capitol Hill.
Rating: Four stars