''Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus'' is an American

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

docuseries Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. *Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...

television series created by

Mike Judge Michael Craig Judge (born October 17, 1962) is an American actor, animator, writer, producer, director and musician. He is the creator of the animated television series ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' (1993–1997, 2011, 2022–present), and the co-cre ...

, Richard Mullins and Dub Cornett that premiered on September 22, 2017 on

Cinemax Cinemax is an American pay television, cable, and satellite television network owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. Developed as a companion "maxi-pay" service complementing the offerings shown on parent net ...

. It is Cinemax's only animated series.

Premise

The series is presented as a

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...

of musicians with each season focusing on a specific genre. It is narrated by Mike Judge and presents anecdotes of star performers as told by their families, bandmates, and close associates. Interview subjects are presented in

rotoscope Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, animators projected photographed live-action movie images onto a glass panel and traced o ...

and their anecdotes in a contrasting

cel animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation. Proce ...

style, interspersed with performance footage and news footage.

Production

On January 12, 2017, it was announced that

had given the production a series order for a first season consisting of eight episodes. The show was created by

, Richard Mullins, and Dub Cornett. Judge and Cornett executive produce, Bob Engelman co-executive produces, and Mullins produces. On May 16, 2018, it was announced that the series had been renewed for a second season moving the genre focus from country to the likes of

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the honor ...

and

P-Funk Parliament-Funkadelic (abbreviated as P-Funk) is an American music collective of rotating musicians headed by George Clinton, primarily consisting of the funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic, both active since the 1960s. Their distinctive ...

. Joining the series creative team are Mark Monroe as a co-executive producer and Nelson George as a consulting producer. On October 4, 2018, it was reported that the second season would premiere on November 2, 2018.

Release

On September 14, 2017, Cinemax released the first official trailer for the series.

Episodes

Season 1 (2017)

Season 2 (2018)

Reception

The first season has been met with a positive response from critics. On the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the series holds a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 8.5 out of 10, based on 6 reviews.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which uses a weighted average, assigned the series a score of 83 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links

* {{Cinemax 2010s American adult animated television series 2010s American animated comedy television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American documentary television series 2017 American television series debuts 2018 American television series endings American adult animated comedy television series American adult animated musical television series English-language television shows Cinemax original programming Television series created by Mike Judge Documentary television series about music