The Simpsons is America’s longest-running prime time TV show. It has some way to go before it matches Coronation Street’s 46-year run, but then The Simpsons isn’t about whining old women, so it still wins.

Not that it will stop new episodes of The Simpsons being made – Fox has just commissioned two more seasons of The Simpsons, meaning that it will be on air until at least 2008. That’s in America, of course; in Britain we’ll probably get to see these new Simpsons episodes sometime shortly after the next ice age.

Fox has just ordered the 18th and 19th seasons of The Simpsons (DVDs),
which will see the cartoon series haul itself past the 400 episode
mark. In fact, The Simpsons has now been on air for so long that
children who once thought it hilarious to buy the Simpsons musical
spin-off double-header of Do The Bartman and Deep Deep Trouble now have
15 years of burning, crippling shame to put behind them.

It’s hoped that the new seasons of The Simpsons will be something of a return to form for the show, which has recently been unable to capture the magic of its glory days. In fact, it’s hoped that The Simpsons season 18 will be so good that it will make The Simpsons season 13 look like The Simpsons season 16.

Fortunately the cast of The Simpsons, including Dan Castellaneta and
Julie Kavner, are thought to be on-hand to provide voices to all the
characters, after their threatened strike action a few years ago was
averted when they decided that $250,000 an episode was a reasonable
amount of money to be paid for saying "D’oh!" in a silly voice.

As well as the two new seasons of The Simpsons, there’s also the Simpsons movie to be made. Plus all kinds of shoddy cash-in Simpsons computer games, too. Fantastic!

Read more:

Two more years of ‘The Simpsons’ – CNN 

[story by Stuart Heritage]