Father of the Pride follows a family of white lions, the patriarch of which stars in a Siegfried & Roy show in Las Vegas.

[1] Despite heavy promotion and support, the series was cancelled after one season due to declining ratings.

The family contains Larry, the bumbling yet well-intentioned star of Siegfried & Roy's show; Kate, a pretty, stay-at-home mother who is a member of a special women's group; Sierra, their teenage daughter who is frequently annoyed by her family; Hunter, their awkward young son, who is a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings; Sarmoti, Kate's father and Sierra and Hunter's grandfather who has a dislike for Larry; and Snack, Larry's mischievous gopher friend.

Recurring characters appear alongside the lion family; these include Larry's friends Roger, Chutney, Vincent, and Nelson; Larry's rival Blake and his wife Victoria; Sarmoti's friends Bernie, Duke, Chaz, and the Snout Brothers; Hi Larious; Kate's friends Foo-Lin, Lily, and Brittany; two lesbian gophers Chimmi & Changa; and Sierra's boyfriend Justin.

Larry asks Snack to help him and they visit Siegfried and Roy to try and convince them to keep Sarmoti in the show as the star.

The three accidental stumble across a venomous snake nest; Sarmoti is bitten and Larry has to suck out the poison.

When Larry gets stage fright during one of Siegfried and Roy's shows, they take him to see Kelsey Grammer, thinking he is a real therapist like his character on Frasier.

The next time Siegfried and Roy do a show, Larry accepts his position and his feelings about it, and no longer has stage fright.

Siegfried and Roy decide to build a 100 foot tall robot of Jessica Simpson and make it the centre of their show.

Sarmoti's date complains about paying the bill and she is confronted by the leader of Kate's women's group.

In fact, a typical episode unfolds across all 30 principal sets and features two or three unique locations as well.

In Father of the Pride, the Secret Garden encompasses residences for the main characters and their families and public areas ranging from the community bar to a school classroom.

Since Larry and his family drive the story lines for most of the episodes, their residence is the most detailed, comprising separate, contiguous sets for the living room, the kitchen, and the children's bedrooms.

Meanwhile, the assets are stored in individual files in order to be loaded into separate layers and assembled modularly.

[18] In 2002, Jeffrey Katzenberg came up with the idea for the series when he visited Siegfried & Roy's show in Las Vegas: "I thought, I wonder what it's like for those lions.

Katzenberg recalled, "There was a short period of time where we all just rocked out on our heels and couldn't be particularly creative and certainly not very funny.

"[15] The opening sequence starts off with a red sports car, with the Nevada license plate "MAGIC1", being driven by Siegfried and Roy past many of the attractions in Las Vegas.

Larry sings a rendition of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas" as the background music throughout the title sequence.

[22] However, the series was expected to improve,[23] especially considering heavy promotion during NBC's coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

[26] In early December, Jeffrey Katzenberg announced that he did not think the series would be picked up for a second season.

Father of the Pride received a negative response from television critics, who considered it to be little more than a gimmick and a shill for other NBC and DreamWorks properties (two early episodes extensively featured The Today Show's Matt Lauer and another featured Donkey from the Shrek franchise).

Also, many television critics noticed that the series' humor was very similar to South Park (one episode even had a character say, "Screw you guys, I'm goin' home!").

The film in question was seen by the Council as much more family-friendly than this series, which the PTC stated could inadvertently draw the wrong audience based on the way it was promoted by NBC.

[29] Father of the Pride won an Annie Award in 2005 for Character Design in an Animated Television Production.

[30] It was also nominated for a 2005 People's Choice Award in the category Favorite New TV Comedy Series.