The show aired on CBS as part of its Saturday morning children's lineup from September 17, 1988, to December 10, 1994.

Other voices present on the show included Thom Huge as Jon Arbuckle,[3] Garfield's human owner, and Gregg Berger as Odie the dog.

The comic strip was first adapted into animated form in 1980 for the special The Fantastic Funnies, but reached a wider audience in 1982 with the television movie Here Comes Garfield on CBS.

[6][circular reference] These episodes were later split into half-hour blocks for reruns, syndication, and home video.

The title character, Garfield (voiced by Lorenzo Music), is a greedy and laid-back orange tabby cat.

His owner is a human named Jon Arbuckle (voiced by Thom Huge), whose story lines include his failed attempts to date women and his frustrations of dealing with Garfield's mischief.

Jon is also the owner of Odie (voiced by Gregg Berger), a yellow dog who is often the subject of Garfield's pranks.

The lead character is Orson (voiced by Gregg Berger), an imaginative pig who enjoys reading books.

Orson's brothers Mort, Gort, and Wart (respectively voiced by Frank Welker, Thom Huge, and Howard Morris) regularly serve as antagonists within the U.S.

Although the series was a success in the ratings at the time, it had become expensive to make and the Saturday morning cartoon format was in decline by the mid-1990s.

As a result, CBS proposed renewing the show for another season, albeit with significant budget cuts.

Charles Solomon of The Los Angeles Times wrote in 1988, "Garfield has lost all his feline qualities and become a crabby little man in a cat suit.

"[12] Hal Erickson says that "Garfield and Friends rapidly became the hub around which the rest of CBS' morning lineup was built," and it "seemed to get better with each passing season.

On May 25, 2016, 9 Story Media Group announced that they had acquired worldwide distribution rights to Garfield and Friends and planned to remaster the series in HD and re-release it on DVD.

[19] Garfield and Friends has been syndicated on television around the world, beginning in the late 1980s and remaining on air in present day.

In Latin America, it played on Cartoon Network from 1993 to 2005, on Boomerang from 2005 to 2008, on Warner Channel from 1998 to 2002, and on Tooncast from 2008 to 2016.

Since the 73-episode syndication package performed well enough on stations already airing the show, acquiring the later episodes were deemed unnecessary.

[31] On October 25, 2018, it was announced that the first 30 episodes of Garfield and Friends will be made available to stream on Boomerang, in remastered form, starting on November 1, 2018.

Much of the creative team on Garfield and Friends also worked on this series, such as executive producer/creator Jim Davis and co-writer/voice director Mark Evanier.

Other familiar voice actors have also appeared, some of them reprising their roles (such as Gregg Berger as Odie and Herman Post).