“Aqua Teen Hunger Force” is back on Adult Swim after an eight-year hiatus and with its original title — no surprise to series co-creator Dave Willis.
“The network cancelled the show,” he told The Post. “I think Adult Swim is probably run by a lot of whimsy. ‘Aqua Teen’ was always successful, even at the end, but speaking for myself, maybe it was nice to take a break from it.
“I always knew that cartoons don’t ever die,” he said. “Look at ‘Scooby Doo’ — they’ll be making that long after the apocalypse in one form or another.”
The surreal, gotta-see-it-to-believe-it “ATHF,” co-created by Matt Maiellaro and airing Sundays at 11:30 p.m., revolves around three anthropomorphic roommates with sketchy powers: bossy Master Shake (a life-sized milkshake, voiced by Dana Snyder), Frylock (a box of French fries armed with laser-beam eyes and a goatee, voiced by Cary Means) and Meatwad (a childish ball of meat who can morph into different shapes).
They live in in South Jersey next door to their human friend/foil: hirsute Carl Brutananadilewski, a fringe-bald politically incorrect, guttural man-child with a bad mustache who’s always dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt and sweats. He’s obsessed with cars, girls and the NY Giants (not necessarily in that order) and is voiced by Willis, who also voices Meatwad.
“Aqua Teen” never totally went away; after ending its original run in 2015, there was a direct-to-video movie, “Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm,” released last year as a sequel to the 2007 big-screen movie “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.”
Willis, who calls the new five episodes “a micro-mini nano season,” said he and Maiellaro didn’t change too much in bringing the series back after its long layoff.
“It just came back organically,” he said. “We didn’t have any big discussion about reinventing the show — in fact, if anything, it was, ‘Let’s go back to the original name,’ to whatever makes Matt and myself laugh.
“The animation house is different; it’s Boyd County, which does [FX series] ‘Archer,’” he said. “We just got brought into the 21st century. The movie was the first time we [story]boarded anything. We’re a cartoon — who doesn’t storyboard their show? Nobody made shows like we made them in this arcane anime style … I think there’s a little more spit-and-polish to the animation [in the new episodes].
“But our goal was for it to look the same.”
One thing that viewers might notice is that Carl has evolved from his caveman attitudes — well, maybe just a little — when he calls someone a “camel jockey” and self-corrects himself: “I’m gonna take the high road and say ‘Muslim extremist.’”
“I like that Carl has matured since we’ve been doing the show and that he actually holds himself to a higher standard,” Willis said, tongue planted firmly in cheek, as he breaks into Carl’s voice: “I will not get a sixth DUI! This is where I draw the line on personal responsibility!”
This season also includes some A-list guest stars: Danny Trejo, Lance Henriksen, Diallo Riddle, Bashir Sulahuddin … and “Succession” star Brian Cox.
“Matt and I are both fans of [the movie starring Cox] ‘Manhunter’ and Matt is very clear that Cox is the only Hannibal Lecter. I was a big fan of his in ‘Succession’ as well. It wasn’t like the Brian Cox camp reached out to us and said, ‘We want ‘Aqua Teen’ to be our next project after ‘Succession.’
“But he was great,” Willis said of Cox. “I think his last words as he was leaving the [recording] studio were, ‘Well, good luck with that.’”