And that's why A&E has decided to start remaking new episodes of Dog The Bounty Hunter, months after the show was pulled off air when Dog The Bounty Hunter started chucking the n-word around in a phone conversation like Christ knows what. 

Nobody is exactly sure what convinced A&E to start bringing Dog The Bounty Hunter back, but one possible clue lies in the locked cupboard full of screaming naked A&E executives who couldn't stop scratching at their burning eyes that was discovered last week. The fact that 'Give me my show back, bra' was also written on the cupboard wall in blood may be another indication.

Dog The Bounty Hunter has had a pretty rough ride of it lately. For all his 84 years up until last November, Dog The Bounty Hunter was invincible – a barn door of a man who'd deliberately grown his hair into a freakish Mad Max mullet just to dare people to even think about laughing at him. Dog The Bounty Hunter had never met a man he hadn't blinded with bear mace, and that was enough to give him his own show.

But that all came to an end in November when Dog The Bounty Hunter repeatedly used the word 'nigger' to describe his son's girlfriend in a taped phonecall. And that was it – frightened to be associated with a racist, advertisers bailed out of his show, A&E suspended production and Dog The Bounty Hunter was branded as the funniest-looking racist in the whole wide world. 

Dog The Bounty Hunter has been on a weird course of rehabilitation for the incident, which has included crying on TV, slowly learning that having a ridiculous suntan doesn't make you black and bewilderingly vowing to be buried in an unmarked slave grave at George Washington's house, and now it's paid off, because A&E is going to start making new Dog The Bounty Hunter episodes again. The New York Post reports:

After a five-month hiatus, A&E yesterday restarted production on the popular series Dog The Bounty Hunter. The show, which documents the life and work of bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman and his family of reformed misfits, is shot almost entirely in Hawaii, where the family operates "Da Kine" bail bonds. "Since the premise of 'Dog the Bounty Hunter' is about second chances, we have decided to give him one," said a statement from A&E. No return date has been set yet. Filming has not started either, according to reports, but producers have begun to gear up by renting cars and hiring make-up artists and camera crews.

What? The premise of Dog The Bounty Hunter is about second chances? Could've fooled us – we always thought it was about watching a funny-looking redneck and his funny-looking redneck family use preposterously heavy-handed tactics to try and spray other rednecks in the eyes with chemical tear gas.

Anyway, despite all the happy talk, it's difficult to see how Dog The Bounty Hunter will be able to have the same fearsome effect as before – all the criminals need to do now when Dog The Bounty Hunter is chasing them down an alley is turn around and shout "I have a black cousin! Don't you know how much your words wounded their heart?" and Dog will either break down and cry or launch into a lengthy confused apology. Either way, crook gets away. 

But that's something to worry about in the future – for now let's just be pleased that A&E has decided to forgive Dog The Bounty Hunter for his wrongdoings and allow his television career to continue out of a sense of pure goodwill.

Well, either that or A&E realised that without Dog The Bounty Hunter it mainly had to rely on a magic show presented by a man who looks like one of My Chemical Romance's Dad for ratings.

Read more:

Dog Out Of Pound – New York Post 

Frankly we're stunned. Who'd have thought that a man named after an animal, who makes his living by chasing wanted criminals and then attacking them with bear mace, who dresses like he's going to a monster truck convention on the moon 20 years ago, and who constantly refers to people as 'bra' could even be slightly racist. But it turns out that Dog The Bounty Hunter is racist, and as a result his American broadcaster A&E has decided not to make his show any more. Hopefully Dog The Bounty Hunter isn't too sad about this – because we've heard rumours that he cries tears of red-hot magma, and that would never do.

Dog The Bounty Hunter is a force of nature. He dresses like the bouncer of a homoerotic Van Halen-playing nightclub that you'd be far too puny to get into. His voice is so deep that it knocks commemorative plates off mantelpieces 500 miles away whenever he speaks. His hair is so long and lustrous that the navy uses it when it wants to make especially pretty rope. Oh yeah, and Dog The Bounty Hunter is a racist, too.

Of course, when you're in the same line of work as Dog The Bounty Hunter you're bound to get into a bit of trouble here and there, whether you're taking down a gang of crazed meth-heads with bear mace or almost getting thrown into a Mexican jail, you have to be prepared for the worst. Unless you're discussing how much you dislike your son's girlfriend because she's black, in which case it's probably best to not prepare at all and then act all surprised when a tape of you angrily repeating the word 'nigger' hits the internet.

That's what happened to Dog The Bounty Hunter, by the way. A recording of him bawling racial abuse about his son's girlfriend is currently the talk of the internet. Well, the internet and A&E, which has suspended production on Dog The Bounty Hunter, you see, because while an angry man macing crooks in the eye is entertainment, an angry racist doing the same is just despicable. E! Online reports:

"We take this matter very seriously," A&E, which lent its full support to Chapman while kidnapping charges were pending against him in Mexico, said in a statement Wednesday. "Pending an investigation, we have suspended production on the series. When the inquiry is concluded we will take appropriate action."

But what exactly did Dog The Bounty Hunter say to get himself in so much trouble? Well, during a telephone conversation with his son, Dog tried to explain why having a black girlfriend might have the odd negative repercussions. Only he didn't put it like that. What Dog The Bounty Hunter actually said was:

"I'm not taking a chance on some motherfucker. I don't care if she's a Mexican, a whore, whatever. Not because she's black but because we use the word nigger sometimes here. I'm not going to take any chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for 30 years because some fucking nigger heard us say nigger and turned us into the Enquirer magazine… If Lyssa was dating a nigger we'd all say 'fuck you' and you know that."

Here's the tape of Dog The Bounty Hunter being all racist in full, if that's the kind of thing you want to hear. 

But let's credit Dog The Bounty Hunter with some intelligence. Not only in the tape did he helpfully point out that "when we use the word nigger we don't mean you fucking scum nigger without a soul" – a qualifier which, we don't know about you, we're awfully glad for – but he's also apparently got the obligatory Al Sharpton apology out of the way already. So just three more apologies and a spell in some kind of spurious racial rehab facility and it'll all be better.

But in the meantime? Perhaps Dog The Bounty Hunter can put his new-found notoriety to good use by just going after black criminals in the future. He could also let Michael Richards into his crew, because let's not forget he has a similar talent for locating people of colour.

Read more:

Bounty Hunter N-Bombs His Way Into Hiatus - E! Online