‘Dinosaurs’ Coming to Disney+ in January

Beloved ’90s sitcom Dinosaurs is officially coming to Disney+ in January, paving the way for new generations to enjoy the classic show. Disney+ announced the addition on Tuesday, revealing that all 65 episodes of the show will premiere on the streaming service on Jan. 29. While the show is not currently streaming anywhere other than for purchase, it was previously available on Hulu.

Dinosaurs was a joint production between Michael Jacobs Productions and Jim Henson Television, with Walt Disney Television and Buena Vista International involved as well. The show debuted in 1991 — one year after the death of Henson — and focused on the life of a family of anthropomorphic dinosaurs as they go about their daily lives and navigate the highs and lows of society and culture in 60,000,003 BC Pangaea. The show ran for four seasons on ABC, eventually airing its finale on Oct. 19, 1994. While it was fan-loved series during its run, the show became somewhat of a cult classic, finding a steady audience once it landed on DVD and streaming services.

In a 2018 interview with Vulture, voice actor Stuart Pankin, who voiced Earl Sinclair — the patriarch of the main Dinosaurs family — explained that he’d heard the show was simply too costly to continue. “I heard it was the most expensive half-hour TV show, at least at that point, because of the maintenance of the animatronics,” he stated. “In the end, it wasn’t worth it for them.”

The final Dinosaurs episode is quite the anomaly among its peers of sitcom finales, as it does not end on a positive note in any sense of the word, opting instead for a PSA of sorts. The final episode features a heavy-hearted message about conservation and caring for the planet, which series co-creator Michael Jacobs revealed was essentially always the plan. “From the moment we first talked about the show, we discussed the idea that it was the domestication of these dinosaurs that made them go extinct,” he said. “The thing that human beings knew about dinosaurs was that, in the end, they were extinct, so we always had that idea in the back of our minds. The show would end by completing the metaphor and showing that extinction.”