Reading Comprehension B2. The Second-Greatest

Meet the Flintstones, a modern Stone Age family. From the town of Bedrock here’s a bit about their history. Sarah ‘Pebbles’ burns tells the prehistoric story:

Somewhere in the world, every hour of every day, The Flintstones is being broadcast. An incredible 300 million fans tune in to watch it regularly. Whether you like them or not, Fred, Wilma and their neighbours, Barney and Betty Rubble, are impossible to avoid. Recently, all 166 episodes were broadcast non-stop on television across the USA. Not bad for a cartoon which was badly received by the critics on its first run 38 years ago.

Cartoonists Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera are the men responsible for The Flintstones. Screen Gems approached them in the late 1950s with the idea of producing an animated prime-time programme. It had never been done before, but with the fast growing popularity of their Quick Draw McGraw and Huckleberry Hound, the cartoonists gave it a go. It was a decision they were never to regret.

They decided to create a family and give them the same problems as contemporary suburban families, but with something very different about them. 'Bill and I invented six different families, however, none really pleased us,' recalls Barbera. 'We drew them as pilgrims, Romans, Eskimos, cowboys and everything imaginable. Then an artist came up with a sketch using leopard skins on Neanderthal-type characters,' says Hanna. "That was it. That's what we wanted them to look like.'

Then they threw an average married couple into a Stone Age environment. Drawing the characters with everyday objects wasn't funny, so they tried stone and other prehistoric materials. The result was a whole lot of clever Stone Age gadgets and endless jokes about rocks, which is why the Flintstones' neighbours got to be called 'Rubble' and why they all live in 'Bedrock'. Fred Flintstone's famous yell - 'yabba dabba doo' - wasn't originally in the script. It was the man behind Fred's voice, Alan Reed, who made it up. During recording he said to Barbera, 'Joe, where it says "yahoo", can I say instead "yabba dabba doo'?

Joe Barbera explains the cartoonists' detailed preparation: 'We researched into prehistoric times, learning about the animals and other natural elements and surroundings characteristic of that period. All this helped in the creation of the series.' Hanna adds: 'It was originally called The Flagstones, until we received a letter from a cartoonist who already had a comic strip of that name. Reluctantly, we changed it to The Flintstones.'

Story lines were based on other TV series about families, and many episodes depended on audience fears, like unemployment and the dentist. Plenty of modern day 50 characters made an appearance too, like the actor 'Stony Curtis' and the conductor 'Leonard Bernstone'. Rock Hudson did not, of course, have to change his name, and one day the famous American president 'Bill Clintstone' is bound to make an appearance.

Armed with the new cartoon family, Barbera set off to New York to try and sell the idea to a TV network. It was hard work and the series came close to never being made at all. After eight weeks of hard sell, still no one was interested, but an hour before Barbera was due to fly home, ABC looked at it. They took to it at once and agreed to broadcast the show. On 30 September 1960, the first episode was shown. Most of the reviews were negative, some even hostile, but the viewers absolutely loved it. Since then it has been translated into languages and has been seen in nearly every country in the world.

The enduring popularity of The Flintstones mainly comes from its juxtaposition of modern, everyday concerns with the Stone Age setting. Its animation required a balance of visual with verbal storytelling that the studio created and others imitated.

The Flintstones was the most financially successful and longest-running network animated television series for three decades, until The Simpsons surpassed it in 1997. In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Flintstones the second-greatest TV cartoon of all time, after The Simpsons."