That’s not all folks: why is there so much animated TV for adults?

Adult humour in cartoons was once virtually unheard of - now, animated TV is saturated with grown-up jokes

In the Guide's weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you've been burning to know the answer to - and settle it, once and for all

The phrase The Simpsons did it first" gets thrown around a lot. But Matt Groening's sitcom about a volatile nuclear family - now 700 episodes in and recently renewed until at least 2023 - was a genuine trailblazer. In 1990, its second season premiere received more than 30 million US viewers, proving a brightly coloured animated TV series with whip-smart writing could attract mature eyeballs in primetime. If their children liked it too, all the better.