Lassie (2014 TV series)

Did You Know?

• In the United Kingdom, the show premiered on Pop UK TV on 6 June 2016.
• In the United States, Lassie debuted on ViacomCBS's streaming service CBS All Access on January 17, 2020.
• An official YouTube channel featuring episodes from the series was launched in 2016.

Characters

Lassie is a brown and white collie living in Grand Mountain National Park with the Parker family. She is fearless and brave, willing to risk her life for family, friends, or strangers. For most of each episode, she communicates only through body language and barks, understood by those who know her well, but she can talk to her animal friends from the Red Barn. Zoe Parker, daughter of Sarah and Graham, owns Lassie. She inherited her parents' love of nature and cares deeply about life in the park, sometimes acting without thinking and endangering herself. She often cares for baby animals and is the one who calls Lassie in the old style, whether there is an emergency or not. Chief Ranger Graham Parker heads the Grand Mountain National Park Ranger Department and is a nature lover committed to preserving the park's serenity. As a boy, he owned a dog named Shadow, similar to Lassie in breed and personality. When Graham was eight, Shadow was bitten by a snake while trying to save him. Graham thought he caused Shadow's death and later his grandfather's death, distancing himself from his grandfather's cabin. He had kept up the mortgage on the property, preventing Robert Humphrey from selling it to developers. Dr. Sarah Parker, the park's veterinarian, cares for animals needing medical attention and, like her family, is quick to express outrage when the park's tranquility is threatened.

Production

The series was announced in June 2009 as a co-production between Classic Media, DQ Entertainment, and broadcasters M6 and ZDF, planned as a U.K.-Ireland-France-Germany-India co-production with computer animation for a late-2010-early-2011 window. In October 2010, DQ announced Superprod Animation and Storyboard Animation in France had joined production, with TF1 replacing M6 as the French broadcast partner. Distribution was shared among the studios, and the series was set for a 2012 delivery.

Episodes

The first season of this series consisted of 26 episodes broadcast between 2014 and 2015. A second season, also 26 episodes, debuted by January 2020. For season two, computer-animated characters were placed against hand-drawn backgrounds, a shift from the first season's style, after DQ Entertainment stopped co-producing and Superprod Animation, via its Angoulême-based Superprod Studio, took over full production. On CBS All Access, these episodes are listed as "Season 1" and carry a 2016 copyright.