When u.k.-based animators David Fine and Alison Snowden put their heads together to create Bob and Margaret Fish in 1993 they had no idea their quirky characters would soon be in such high demand.

Now, teamed with Channel 4 in the u.k. and Toronto’s Nelvana they are gearing up to take the middle-aged British couple to primetime television.

Nelvana is financing 75% of the $7.2-million 13-episode series and will be handling the worldwide distribution with the exception of the u.k. which will be Channel 4 territory.

Following is the story of Bob and Margaret’s journey from notepad to the small screen.

1993: Fine and Snowden, who have made numerous humorous films together before, take bits and pieces of their own personalities, mix in traits of their friends and come up with an animated short about turning 40 called Bob’s Birthday.

Channel 4 comes on to produce the short about Bob, a middle-aged dentist, and his podiatrist wife Margaret and begins searching for a partner. Fine and Snowden turn to the National Film Board, which finances 30% of the £120,000 production.

Fine, a Canadian, and Snowden, a Brit, labor on their short for two years, writing scripts, animating and recording the voices in London, Eng., then travel to Montreal for three months of post, camera work and mixing.

1995: The new year begins, the short is complete and Fine and Snowden are filled with glee when Bob’s Birthday wins the Academy Award for best animated short.

Meanwhile in Toronto, Nelvana ceo Michael Hirsh is searching for an adult animated series suitable for a primetime slot and featuring characters with international appeal.

Following their Oscar coup, Snowden Fine Productions’ London headquarters is innundated with phone calls from intrigued producers hoping to get their hands on Bob and Margaret to create a series, but after spending so much time on the short film the duo at first resist.

‘We thought nothing is going to make me want to do this again,’ says Fine. ‘But then people started asking what happened when they drove off into the sunset at the end of the film, so it seemed like an obvious first step that we would do something else with the characters.’

With Channel 4 back on board, and Nelvana on the back burner, they begin negotiating with Universal Studios in Hollywood.

‘We didn’t want someone to take it and make it into just another series. Everyone in the u.s. thought it wouldn’t fly because it is British and they wanted to say, `Okay, Bob and Margaret are British but they have a lot of American friends,’ or `They are British but they move to Iowa or somewhere in the u.s.’ ‘

1996: Negotiations with Universal fall through and talks begin anew with Nelvana, which Fine says in retrospect was the natural home for Bob and Margaret. Snowden and Fine jet over to Canada’s capital for the Ottawa International Animation Festival, spend some time with the people from Nelvana and cement a deal.

Excitement builds as the show is sold to Canada’s Global Television and Comedy Central in the u.s.

‘We believe in this category, we think that adults love cartoons,’ says Hirsh. ‘I have been talking to Global programmers for years about trying to find a good primetime cartoon and this is the first one that clicked for both of us.’

Back in England, Fine and Snowden get to work on the scripts, which Fine describes as being about very mundane things: their house is broken into and they have to make a claim, they go to a shopping center, Bob and Margaret go on holiday, they rent a video. ‘It’s more about them and how they deal with the issues.’

Summer 1997: Director Jamie Whitney joins the team and begins work in Toronto designing characters based on the first four scripts, giving Fine and Snowden the final say.

The script is storyboarded, characters and locations are developed and everything is sent back to London.

Once the boards are approved, everything is shot on a Leica reel to ensure the timing is right. Then the layout, design and posing departments step in.

Whitney gives it the go-ahead and all is sent to the Philippines for completion. It gets shot as a pencil test, comes back to Toronto and is then scanned into the computer. Whitney estimates the first of the 13 episodes will be ready in March ’98.

Fall 1997: Whitney jets off to London to get together with Fine and Snowden to rough out some ideas for an opening.

Bob and Margaret, the first Canadian primetime adult animation series, hits the airwaves next fall on Global and next summer on Comedy Central.

According to Hirsh, this is just the beginning for Nelvana, which is developing a number of other projects in this category including a primetime animated series based on a Monty Python book called Doctor Fegg.