Theguardian iconTheguardianAug 28, 2026 ~1 min source read

The Guide #258: the perennially puerile, eternally eccentric Adult Swim turns 25

It still retains its cult status • Don't get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Twenty five years ago this coming week, a strange block of programming suddenly began airing in the wee small hours on the US cable channel Cartoon Network.

The Guide #258: the perennially puerile, eternally eccentric Adult Swim turns 25

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It still retains its cult status • Don't get The Guide delivered to your inbox?

Sign up here Twenty five years ago this coming week, a strange block of programming suddenly began airing in the wee small hours on the US cable channel Cartoon Network.

Anyone half-watching with the sound off might have mistaken the shows as a continuation of the toons airing in the daytime: bright, big-eyed affairs full of energy and slapstick comedy.

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The useful part

It still retains its cult status • Don't get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Twenty five years ago this coming week, a strange block of programming suddenly began airing in the wee small hours on the US cable channel Cartoon Network. Anyone half-watching with the sound off might have mistaken the shows as a continuation of the toons airing in the daytime: bright, big-eyed affairs full of energy and slapstick comedy.

How it works

  • Close to 100 shows have aired in this insomnia-friendly night-time block (though today it arguably operates as its own independent channel within a channel), almost all of them strange eno...
  • Piggybacking on the adult animation boom of the 90s – The Simpsons, South Park et al.
  • – Adult Swim steered things off in to bizarre and unsettling new territory.
  • If anything, it's only gotten weirder in the quarter of a century since it started.

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