• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

As it starts its 14th season Monday on Hulu, “Futurama” visits a future version of Coney Island, complete with a hot dog eating contest.

The show, from “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, has had 27 years to get to Season 14. It has been an odyssey that is perhaps the most unusual in the history of television.

It premiered on Fox in 1999 and ended its run there in 2003. Five years later, it was revived on Comedy Central, which kept it going until 2013.

New episodes of “Futurama” were then not seen for 10 years until Hulu revived it 2023.

Other animated series from the same era as “Futurama” have experienced similar revivals. Hulu revived “King of the Hill” last August with the first new episodes since 2010.

“American Dad!” first aired on Fox from 2005 to 2014, then went to TBS from 2014 to 2025. Now it’s back on Fox.

In Episode One of the new season of “Futurama,” the subject is hot dogs. The subject arises because Philip Fry, the show’s main character who was accidentally transported from 1999 to 2999 in the series premiere, regrets that he lost the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest by a margin of just two hot dogs a thousand years previously.

This brings the gang to Coney Island, circa 2999 -- the amusement mecca in south Brooklyn where hot dogs have long been a way of life, including the annual Hot Dog Eating Contest held by Nathan’s every July Fourth.

But the problem with the hot dogs of the far future is that they are all vegan, which do not slide down the gullet like the beef franks of yesteryear.

As a result, the annual Hot Dog Eating Contest has not been held in hundreds of years.

It seems that cows had become extinct and beef hot dogs with them. So, Professor Farnsworth leads the group on a mission to find beef DNA in Brazil.

He then succeeds in cloning cows, leading one exultant member of the group to declare: “We have the meats!” -- a plug for Arby’s.

In case anyone is wondering, in the search for cow DNA, no one utters the question, “Where’s the beef?”

“Futurama” shares DNA with “The Simpsons.” The art is the same style, and the show is rich in sight gags, particularly when it comes to signage, which is also a hallmark of “The Simpsons.”

One of the signs in the “Futurama” episode, which the TV Blog previewed on Friday, identifies a long-dormant Brazilian ranch as the “Gaucho Marx Cattle Ranch,” featuring a cow’s face decked out like Groucho Marx.

I am a lifelong “Simpsons” fan who has never really sought out the pleasures of “Futurama.” However, it must have lasted this long for a reason.

The 14th season of “Futurama” starts streaming Monday (August 3) on Hulu.