• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, September 18, 2023

First made public in 2021, “Krapopolis” is not exactly ancient history, but this animated spoof of ancient civilization has taken two years to finally come to Fox.

From producer Dan Harmon -- creator of “Rick and Morty” -- “Krapopolis” premieres this coming Sunday (September 24) with two back-to-back episodes at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Eastern.

The following Sunday (October 1), the show will settle into its regular time slot, 8:30 p.m. Eastern, following “The Simpsons,” which has its 35th-season premiere on that same evening.

Readers may recall that throughout the two-year development of “Krapopolis,” the show made headlines around here because of its intention to pioneer the use of blockchain technology to sell a wide range of “digital goods” and NFT “experiences” on a special web site.

Please pardon me if I just mangled some of the nomenclature here. Maybe this will be helpful: It's the description from a Fox press release of this “digital goods” plan.

“Fox’s Web3 media and creative technology company Blockchain Creative Labs operates Krapopolis.com, a dedicated marketplace for the program, marking network television’s first animated series to be curated on the blockchain -- which sells digital goods and NFTs that provide fans exclusive experiences, including access to token-gated content, exclusive show voting rights, private Discord channels and access to meet-and-greets with the cast and crew,” says Fox.

The TV Blog is glad to leave all that to others to mull over and perhaps write commentaries about it.

Meanwhile, now that the show is here, the usual question arises that always accompanies the premiere of a new show: Is it any good? This is a topic the TV Blog feels qualified to handle.

Yes, “Krapopolis” is very good indeed -- a rich stew of visual and scripted comedy. The show focuses on a handful of characters, including Tyrannis, a sensitive king who is not tyrannical at all (voiced by Richard Ayoade); his father, Shlub, a randy minotaur (Matt Berry); and his mother, the goddess Deliria (Hannah Waddingham).

Rounding out the main characters are Stupendous, Tyrannis’s amazon warrior sister (Pam Murphy); and his brother, Hippocampus (Duncan Trussell), a genius whose brain seems somehow more developed than others.

The hippocampus is “a complex brain structure embedded deep into temporal lobe [that] has a major role in learning and memory,” according to a definition I found on the National Institutes of Health website.

In the first episode of “Krapopolis,” Tyrannis is hard at work trying to persuade his cohorts and the population of ordinary people he nominally rules to get behind his plan to build a city -- a thing with buildings, walls and an entrance gate.

Hardly anyone comprehends what he is talking about because, apparently, cities are not yet known in the period of Krapopolis, although young King Tyrannis insists they are the coming thing and they should get on board.

One great reason for the Krapopolis-ites to build a walled city: A tribe of barbarian cannibals is camped nearby and they are very hungry.

The solution will be either all-out war or diplomacy, also something unheard of in the era of Krapopolis, although Tyrannis wishes to be a pioneer in this area too.

Whether by force or diplomacy, “Krapopolis” fits right into Fox’s Sunday “Animation Domination” lineup of animated shows.

Whether anyone will want to avail themselves of the show's NFTs and digital goods after watching the show is entirely up to each individual.

Let the record show that these things were not mentioned at all in the premiere episode that Fox provided for preview.

“Krapopolis” premieres on Sunday (September 24) at 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox.