American animators made Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the hero in an episode of a popular cartoon series
The American cartoon series "Family Guy" appeared on the Fox network in 1999. The series revolves around the Griffin family - the affectionate squab Peter Griffin, his spouse, an ex-Miss Rhode Island, and three kids. Like all American situation comedies, the family finds its way out of one unlikely predicament after another in each episode. A recent scrape included a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
In the story, the cartoon's heroes arrive in Moscow only to find bears unicycling in the streets. Since the heroes are not bears, soldiers armed with submachine guns suspect they are spies and haul them off to Putin's office... The prime minister got to the bottom of the situation and let the tourists go. He even demonstrated a sense of humour...
A recent episode of "South Park" was cut because of Putin's appearance in it. Will this "Family Guy" episode suffer the same fate? MK asked Roman Sarkisov, the general director of the 2х2 Channel, which will broadcast the cartoon, to answer this question.
Sarkisov: "Thank you for prompting a review of the episode. I immediately watched the footage and did not find anything objectionable in it. I haven't seen all of it though. But this scene can be shown by the channel as it is."
"What would it take to censor a cartoon from Russian TV?"
"Drugs, sex, pedophilia, Nazi propaganda, etc. will not be allowed in any form. All these things would be censored. As a rule, foreign producers make two versions - light and heavy. The first is designed for free channels, which everyone can see. The second is for cable networks, which require an access password and are prepay. So, we can simply take the light version and not worry about any criminal charges," Sarkisov explained.