The producers gave each composer one or two episodes to do whilst they were looking for the style that would best suit the program, eventually settling on John O'Connor and Roger Neill.

He wrote, "it was a good year for new cartoons, but I'll take King of the Hill bracing openheartedness over South Park's clever but monotonous heartlessness any time.

TV’s most original, complicated new character was Hank Hill—middle-class Texan, political conservative, social libertarian, Willie Nelson fan—who exploded every white-guy small-screen stereotype in place since Archie Bunker.

"[8] In his 1997 review for the Pilot episode, Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "whereas The Simpsons sees animation as an opportunity to expand physical reality and tour plot realms far beyond the resources of regular sitcoms, King of the Hill is visually myopic in its storytelling."

Rosenberg also wrote that King of the Hill lacked "the panoramic vision and often slashing irreverence and social observances of The Simpsons, which, although not the hilarious achiever it once was, remains a cleverly written farce and commentary on pop culture.

Rosenberg added that, "despite being more conventionally humanoid and recognizable than the exotic universe of The Simpsons, the premiere of King of the Hill is light on media signposts, limiting itself pretty much to benign mentions of NBC's Seinfeld.

"[9] A December 1997 article from Time magazine titled "The Best Television of 1997" stated that, "The Simpsons is still the cleverest comedy on TV, and King of the Hill creates a world with far more specificity than any live-action sitcom.

"[10] In June 1997, Katy Daigle of the Hartford Courant labelled the show as being an improvement over Mike Judge's other animated series Beavis and Butt-Head, claiming that, "it has substance to its consistently on-target humor.

[12] Phil Gallo of Variety commented in his review of the Pilot that, "it's a break from all the over-the-top sitcoms Fox has scheduled in hopes of building off the Married... with Children franchise.

"[13] In a 2006 review of the DVD release of the first season, Dorian Lynskey of British publication Empire gave it four out of five stars, commenting that "it seems odd that the Hills were once dismissed as Simpsons copyists.

Lynskey added "Texan-born[note 1] creator Mike Judge's natural feel for small-town rhythms and ordinary lives makes this the truest and kindest of the post-Groening animated sitcoms.