King of the Hill is a long-running animated sitcom created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels that aired from 1997 to 2010.
In the fictional Texas suburb of Arlen lives Hank Hill (Judge), a long time salesman of propane and propane accessories who's trying his hardest to always do the right thing. A lot of the humor in the series comes from the fact that Hank's a gigantic stick-in-the-mud. His friends, who are also his neighbors, include down-and-out divorced Army barber Bill Dauterive (Stephen Root), cuckolded Conspiracy Theorist and pest exterminator Dale Gribble (Johnny Hardwick), and Boomhauer (Judge), a womanizing motormouth whose job was unknown until a last-second reveal in the series finale.
Hank's family include his wife Peggy (Kathy Najimy), a substitute Spanish teacher who is a little too prideful of her abilities; his son Bobby (Pamela Adlon), a sensitive, naive and somewhat awkward child who's far from the athletic type that Hank hoped for (though he loves him all the same); and his ditzy niece, Luanne Platter (Brittany Murphy), who fled her trailer-trash upbringing to come live with the Hills for the first few seasons. Hank also has plenty of conflicts with his father Cotton (Toby Huss), a misogynistic World War II veteran, and his uptight Laotian next-door neighbor Kahn (Huss).
One thing that stands out the most about the series is that unlike most other animated sitcoms that feature wacky or outlandish situations (e.g. The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, and all of their myriad offspring), King of the Hill attempts to retain realism by seeking humor in the otherwise conventional, making it the polar opposite of Judge's previous show Beavis and Butt-Head.
After running for numerous seasons, the show finally ended its run on Fox on September 13, 2009. Four unaired episodes were released in syndication and on [adult swim] in 2010.
The entire series is currently available on DVD and Hulu. Re-runs can also be seen on Adult Swim and FXX.
In January 2022,
after months of silence, Greg Daniels and Mike Judge said they would reunite and oversee a reboot of the series through their new animation company, Bandera Entertainment. While the full extent of the series is unknown, Daniels has stated the reboot's setting will be 15 years after the original series ended. In January 2023, the reboot was officially announced on Hulu.
