It was created by writing partners Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who had previously worked as writers and showrunners on the third and fourth seasons of The Simpsons.

Sherman is cold, mean-spirited, and elitist as a movie critic, [2] but in his everyday life he has a gentler nature and is filled with self-doubt.

Some of the secondary characters that are a part of Jay's story include his zany adoptive parents and their biological daughter Margo, his well-meaning son Marty, the Australian film star Jeremy Hawke, his snide make-up lady Doris, his ex-wife Ardeth, and his boss Duke Phillips.

In the second season, Jay acquires a love interest: a Southern woman named Alice Tompkins, who later becomes his long-term girlfriend.

Jean and Reiss were showrunners on The Simpsons and had been approached by series creator Matt Groening to design a spin-off centered on Krusty the Clown.

Their pitch featured many similarities to The Critic – Krusty would be a single father in New York with a prickly make-up lady and an eccentric boss resembling Ted Turner.

Groening turned down the idea, instead wanting the Krusty spin-off to be a live-action series led by the character's animated voice, Dan Castellaneta.

[2] When choosing things to parody, Reiss and Jean made a conscious decision to find the right balance between current pop culture and references that would stand the test of time.

Moore was the supervising director and thus oversaw a lot of the design process; he was also responsible for how the action would play out and how each shot would be framed.

Moore had his reservations as the character had a "flat head and tiny eyes that were hard to act with" and was composed of shapes that were difficult to turn in a 3D space.

The character's physical appearance was based on Gábor Csupó, a Hungarian animator on the early seasons of The Simpsons.

Four actresses, including Margaret Cho, were hired and dismissed as the voice of Sherman's younger sister Margo.

Due to the sheer number of film and TV parodies, the team also sought character actors who could play many different roles.

Club explains "in creating The Critic, Al Jean and Mike Reiss set out to make the show as dissimilar from The Simpsons as humanly possible".

"[18] While "Springfield is very aggressively and deliberately Anywhere, United States, The Critic is an extended Valentine to a certain kind of pointy-headed East Coast elitism.

For example, Nancy Cartwright, Doris Grau, Tress MacNeille, Russi Taylor, and Jon Lovitz have all played primary/secondary characters on both shows.

At the end of the episode, as he is leaving for New York, Jay offers the Simpsons an appearance on Coming Attractions/The Critic, but Bart declines, saying, "Nah, we're not going to be doing that."

He said "for more than six months I tried to convince Jim Brooks and everyone connected with the show not to do such a cynical thing, which would surely be perceived by the fans as nothing more than a pathetic attempt to...advertise The Critic at the expense of the integrity of The Simpsons."

Jay is always awakened by a disquieting phone call or radio news report, and eventually watches a clip that parodies a well-known film before delivering the same negative opinion: "It stinks!"

He watches the closing credits in a theater and delivers one of four comeback lines (five, once the character of Alice Tompkins was added in the second season) to an usher who tells him the show is over.

This shows the corruption of an industry that aims to provide unbiased thoughtful analyses of films, due to bribery and politics.

[25] Another example is in the June 22 episode "L.A. Jay," where after trying to break into the film business by writing a script, which is revealed to be rather good, a studio buys it off him for $100,000 in order to bury it, thereby keeping quality out of the industry.

For example, one episode satirizes Duke's project involving making the films "more attractive to a contemporary audience" by "inserting computer-generated happy endings" (ex: Casablanca's Rick Blaine gets his girl while the restored version of Stanley Kubrick's "deadwood" Spartacus combined with a chase scene spoofing Smokey and the Bandit).

In 1994, The Chicago Sun-Times gave a typical review of the show with, "Jay Sherman, the eponymous culture vulture of The Critic, would undoubtedly say his new animated comedy on ABC 'stinks.'

[35] In the latter article, IGN said: "Of all the projects completed by ex-Saturday Night Live players, The Critic is the most fully realized, hilarious and heartwarming.

It took its cues from Woody Allen movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan, and offered up a style of random abstract humor that wouldn't really be seen again until Family Guy.

[37] People magazine gave it a B, saying "This animated series is slyly amusing when sticking it to showbiz, taking sarcastic swipes at everyone from Steven Seagal to Gene Shalit.

It said "The creators and Lovitz seem to [care about the show], as there are always talks cropping up of a revival of The Critic, either as an animated project, or possibly a live-action one.

[21] The same review called the show "outlandish in a way that The Simpsons would not adopt until later", and likened its cutaway humor to Family Guy.

Responding to the successful DVD sales of Family Guy and The Simpsons, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment decided to release The Critic: The Complete Series DVD box set on January 27, 2004, which includes all 2 seasons and 23 TV episodes (in their original production order) and the webisodes.