I am watching Funky Cops, a new cartoon series originally made (I think) in France, and currently airing Wednesday nights on MTV Germany.
It is a cartoon spoof of 70s cop shows like Starsky and Hutch, with a bit of blaxploitation stuff thrown in (think Shaft, Cleopatra Jones ...), and with funk and disco music galore. The theme song is a remix of Sister Sledge's "Lost in Music". It's a brilliant show, if you ask me.
Is it on anywhere in the States? I'm wondering about this, since none of my American friends seems to know it. Also, this disco-dance revival that we've seen here in Europe recently (Kylie Minogue's last two albums, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Robbie Rivera, the Chic sound, and so on) are somewhat limited to continental Europe, as well.

Anyway, I dig the Funky Cops for both the music and the animation.
I'd like to write a detailed CAH adaptation of it at some point. Do you think this could work?
It would be a complete about-face from what I am usually working on:
a series without overt superpowers, without spaceships, robots, aliens,
magic and the like. The technical level would be limited to that of the 70s in America, maybe this should be "to the level of some _fictitious_ technology and gadgets from the 1970s", as seen on The Bionic Man and Charlie's Angels. Basically, this would be a cop show cartoon.

Here's a link to some information about Funky Cops:
http://www.mtv.de/funkycops/

Norbert wrote: I'd like to write a detailed CAH adaptation of it at some point. Do you think this could work?
It would be a complete about-face from what I am usually working on:
a series without overt superpowers, without spaceships, robots, aliens,
magic and the like. The technical level would be limited to that of the 70s in America, maybe this should be "to the level of some _fictitious_ technology and gadgets from the 1970s", as seen on The Bionic Man and Charlie's Angels. Basically, this would be a cop show cartoon.

Here's a link to some information about Funky Cops:
http://www.mtv.de/funkycops/

So, it's probably not televised in the States?
Hm, I'd thought so myself.

That's a shame, actually. I hope it will be available on DVD at some point.
The show has a copyright date of 2001 from the French production company, but this is the first time it is airing in Germany. It will be late summer before they've shown all episodes on MTV (one per week).

As for the stats, I would like to use a trait maximum of 4(3), simply because I like the mechanic of rolling several dice. That's fun, even if the new optional rules in CAH should encourage using +5, +6 instead of 4(2) and 4(3), i.e., the super-ratings. I'd limit the 4(3) rating to the player-characters and major villains, though, and there would probably be a rule that you can have only one trait at 4(3), or two traits at 4(2) instead. Even that would have to be justified by a very good background story. Otherwise it should be 4, you're right.
Oomph and Stunt Points would remain as normal.
Characters should be built on 75-80 CPs, out of intuition.
I'd have to think about a pool of points put aside for cop weapons and
a sports car. Maybe those would be free perks the player-characters are getting.

As a matter of fact, if I were to run The Funky Cops as a series in CAH,
of course the team of recurring characters would have to be expanded to at least 4, as in the Ghostbusters series.

I was thinking, since they recently had an episode featuring a funk-soul group that Ace was once a member of (he quit the band to become a hairdresser about a month before they scored their first real #1 song),
the whole 70s-style band could work as a template for player-characters.
The band could constantly travel around (cf. Tommy K and the Star Kitties, which is in the book), play gigs, argue over contracts, have meetings with their manager, rehearse new material, and in between get caught up in weird crime cases and get people out of trouble.
Or, the team of characters might be styled after Police Academy or similar productions, which also gives one a wider range of interesting personalities to choose from than the dynamic duo of Dick & Ace.

I missed the last two episodes of Funky Cops, by the way, and I think
I am going to stick to the weekend re-runs instead of the late Wednesday night timeslot.
All in all, this is the one show that got me interested in MTV again, maybe the first thing on that network to really grip me since The Osbournes. (I couldn't care less about Dismissed or Jackass, which all the youngsters are watching here, and it's been a long time since Beavis & Butthead were new and trendy.)
By the way, even if you guys can't watch the show in the States, yet, try to get yourselves a copy of the brilliant new version of "Lost In Music", by Wackside, I can't recommend it highly enough. It's out on Universal/Brickhouse Records. ;-)

Norbert wrote:

Here's a link to some information about Funky Cops:
http://www.mtv.de/funkycops/

The Spoken Name wrote:

Norbert wrote:

Here's a link to some information about Funky Cops:
http://www.mtv.de/funkycops/

***I want to play in this series!! If they ever release a DVD over by you, let me know!

Thanks for the link.

ALERT!! ALERT!! ALERT!!
BIGGEST OLD ALERT YOU'RE GONNA SEE HERE TODAY!

See, miracles still do happen to us cartoon lovers!
Minutes ago I posted my reply saying it could be a long time before we see anything from the series out on DVD, and now I noticed that the MTV site has a new sidebar on the right with an entry that says "FC Shop"
(FC for "Funky Cops"!).
If you click on that entry, you'll immediately see that about 6 of the adventures of Dick & Ace are indeed commercially available by now!
You can get them on VHS tape or DVD.

The three releases (2 episodes each) so far are called:
"Funky Cops 1: Vollgas in San Francisco" (Full Speed in San Francisco)
"Funky Cops 2: Der Kronzeuge" (The Prime Witness)
"Funky Cops 3: Rock oder Flop" (Rock or Flop)

Enjoy!!

MTV Germany has changed the air time for Funky Cops to Tuesday afternoons and the weekly re-run on Saturdays.
The Wednesday night timeslot is now occupied by several Japanese animé series. Funky Cops was moved to Tuesday (which appears to have been the original planning earlier this year, because they announced it for Tuesdays on the MTV website long ago).

The link I gave you here is still correct,
and the DVDs are definitely available.
The same goes for the new CD, "Funky Cops: The Original Sound Track".
This one features Sister Sledge, KC & the Sunshine Band, Kool & the Gang, Rose Royce, Barry White, and -- I believe -- Kurtis Blow, to name the most famous ones. Boogie down, everybody!

Hi!

A pal from our Spectrum Game Studios mailing list told me that the Funky Cops cartoon series is also scheduled to finally air in the States, the whole series in sequence, later this year. AintItCool.com had the info amongst their latest "anime" television news.

The official text bite is to be found under:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=15333

You have to scroll down on that page a great deal before you get to the bit about the Funky Cops, but it's definitely there. Of course, once this show starts airing in the US, it will be broadcast in an English-language dub, not in French or German. Enjoy.

I noticed that I haven't even started discussing the peculiarities or ideas for house rules in this series:

First off, I think a Funky Cops game should feature the new sub-trait Athletics (Disco Dancing).
And maybe you might want to throw in a sub-trait like Driving (Sports Car: Swerving, Vehicle Evade). And among the Social Traits you could also add Appearance (Wardrobe, Personal Grooming, Hairstyles)...

The vehicle construction rules ought to be allowed in Funky Cops, with vehicles as Special Abilities, but only regular police cars, sports cars and other 70s-period cars can be built with your points.
In addition to that, you should pick at least one good disco song as the theme song for every episode, and pin down a specific scene in which this song is played as part of the sound track (...I very much recommend a bunch of old Diana Ross, Bee Gees, Instant Funky, Sylvester, Donna Summer, and other tunes).
In case you'd like to set your version of Funky Cops in the 2000s, use some Robbie Rivera tracks, by any means!! ;-)

Hi, I'm back once more...

I was given a short promo flyer from R.Talsorian Games today, listing a game for the "FUZION" game engine that could be very much in the same vein as the Funky Cops cartoon series I've been talking about...

In fact, I had known that this new FUZION game was planned and due out soon, but I didn't have an official blurb on it so far, and I also didn't mention it on this board because it's in a different system than CAH. Now I think I might as well mention it here.
Besides, I wrote a FUZION-to-CAH conversion last year that's still valid.
It was actually one of the first documents I wrote for CAH.

The new game that could be of interest to fans of Funky Cops is called BAD MUTHAS: Tales from the Funk and the publisher is Chapter 13 Press (I am not affiliated with them, by the way).
Read their promo. I think it's pretty hilarious:

<< Stick it to the Man and stand up for your Brother! There's some jive things going down behind the scenes. It's enough to make a bad ass brother run for cover. Something out there ancient and evil wants to rule the world in 1976. You're the only one who can stop it. You're a hard fighting, smooth loving cat from the streets and nobody understads you but your woman. That's right. You are one Bad Mutha!

Welcome to the Seventies, the height of the Secret War. Enter a world of pimp playas and foxy mamas, secret eyes and bionic spies, superheroes and secret cabals. Bad Muthas: Tales from the Funk (TM), the Fuzion-powered role-playing game inspired by action movies, TV shows and Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, coming soon from Chapter 13. >>

I think that the series Funky Cops has now run its course on MTV Germany. The 25th episode, "Farley's Angels" aired on Wednesday, July 2nd, and the website for the show has not been updated since, and TV guides have not listed the show for the weeks to come.
I assume there were only 25 episodes, hence the series is now finished.
*sigh*

Last night, MTV Germany showed an issue of their movie reports program in the Funky Cops' time-slot, and a half-hour special on The Hulk after that.

I guess I am now left with the task of buying the three Funky Cops DVDs (which contain two episodes each). Other than that, let's hope for re-runs.

Ya never know -- they may be working out a second season. Sometimes, that's the case. More often though, they'd just show re-runs, so it might actually be kaput.

Hi. Thanks for replying...
Actually, it's more likely that the show was planned as a 25- or 26-episode series from the beginning. It originally aired in France in 2001, and I think it has not gone into a second season over there, as well. MTV Germany had picked it up for their Wednesday night "anime" time-slot in April this year.

I went completely wild with CAH character stats this week, as I told you on the mailing list. While I was at it, I also made up some stats for the Funky Cops. All easy-peasy, as far as I am concerned...
I now have a file for their red sportscar and typical "cop" weapons in CAH stats. Oh, by the way, the sportscar is a Vehicle with the "Really Loud Disco-Blasting Sound System" SA. ;-)

Cynthia Celeste Miller wrote: Ya never know -- they may be working out a second season. Sometimes, that's the case. More often though, they'd just show re-runs, so it might actually be kaput.

Norbert wrote:

Cynthia Celeste Miller wrote: Ya never know -- they may be working out a second season. Sometimes, that's the case. More often though, they'd just show re-runs, so it might actually be kaput.

All right! By now I know that they are indeed working on a second season of the show Funky Cops (tentatively another 26 half-hour episodes).
Way cool!!

Go to this link, it'll confirm what I said:

http://www.c21media.net/news/news_dtl.asp?id=6746&promo=20

Yes, it is cool.

Remember that you can get free wallpaper motifs of the Funky Cops for your PC from this page:

http://www.mtv.de/funkycops/downloads.php?historie=,,,,Funky+Cops+Info&groupie=14&

If the link doesn't work, go to http://www.mtv.de/funkycops/ and then click on the Downloads area. Easy-peasy.
You can also watch the trailer and the "Lost In Music" video on the same site. Those are great fun... just lemme say, "bell-bottoms" =O)

Norbert wrote: Yes, it is cool.

Remember that you can get free wallpaper motifs of the Funky Cops for your PC from this page:

The European Funky Cops info on the MTV webpage is out of date.
It's better than nothing, but it is not getting updated. They just left it as it was when the last episode aired here in Germany.

MTV is currently not planning a re-run of the first season, but they are not completely ruling it out, either. They already replied to me about that.

Could someone here please let me know the URL of the TV news site that first had the info about the American television debut of Funky Cops?
I don't have it anymore.
Also, please feel free to let me know when there is an "official" US site about the show when it's gone on the air.

-- Funky Fan Norbert

Hi there,

last Thursday I went to a disco here in Hamburg that looked very much like the one in the Funky Cops cartoon, and we had pretty much the same style of music all night...

Go here to know which club I am talking about:
http://www.GLAM.de/

Considering that the real disco era, historically speaking, only went from 1976 to 1980 (and a friend of mine who was there back in the day told me that fashions and hairstyles were really different by the time 1980 rolled around...), this revival of the music and the attitude has already lasted longer than the original period. If you take 1998 as a starting point, the year that Studio 54 and The Last Days of Disco opened at cinemas, along with their respective sound track CDs, we are now heading into the 6th year of the "new" disco.
And by the way, Glam is not an "oldie" club like others in its vicinity, it is full of 19- and 20-year-olds. Pretty ones, at that.