AUSTIN, TX – The “King of the Hill” revival is really cooking with propane now.
Hulu, which streams the original series, revealed that the Season 14 revival of the former Fox series will debut Aug. 4, with all 10 episodes.
An updated credits sequence illustrates what Hank Hill, his wife Peggy, their son Bobby and their friends in the fictitious Texas town of Arlen have been up to since signing off in 2010. The Hills moved, and their neighbors waited out a pandemic while social distancing in the alley. Later, the Hills returned, looking older from the years gone by.
Co-creators Greg Daniels and Mike Judge, who also voices Hank Hill, joined executive producer Saladin Patterson and voice actors Pamela Adlon, Lauren Tom and Toby Huss onstage May 30 at the Paramount Theatre to tease the upcoming season during a panel for ATX TV Festival.
“Where it clicked for me,” Judge told an audience ready to yell memorable quotes, was “when we started talking about actually aging the characters and the idea of Hank, that they went to Saudi Arabia for a propane gig to retire off of. Ideas started coming in.”
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In a clip shared with fans, Hank is so happy to be back in Texas that he kisses the ground at the airport after his return flight. Now retired, Hank “finds himself not having a job to go to every day,” Patterson said, so “he’s going to find things around the house to fix all the time, which may annoy his wife.”
As for Peggy (Kathy Najimy), Patterson said, “if there’s a character who thinks that she can do anything and now she has the free time to do it, let’s have some fun with what those anythings could be.”
Bobby (Adlon), now in his 20s, is a successful chef at a German-sushi-fusion restaurant in Dallas.
“He’s a hard worker; he learned from his parents,” Adlon said. “It’s almost like as an adult, he’s become more centered and a little bit like his dad.”
Johnny Hardwick, the voice of Hank’s pal, Dale died in 2023 at 64. Hardwick will appear in six episodes of the revival, Judge told the crowd, and Huss is taking over the role of Dale.
“The fact that you guys trusted me to do his voice again is really humbling,” Huss said. “And all I’ve been trying to do is − I’m not trying to copy Johnny as much as I guess as I’m trying to be Johnny. And hopefully Dale comes out through that. But it’s with a lot of love and respect for that guy because he laid down a really wonderful, goofball character that… had a lot of weird heart to him and, and that’s a credit to Johnny. So all I’m trying to do is to hold on to that Dale-ness… We love our guy, Johnny, and it’s so sad that he’s not here.”
During the panel, Daniels highlighted the talents of Brittany Murphy, who died in 2009 at 32 from pneumonia. Murphy voiced the role of Hank and Peggy’s niece Luanne.
“One of the people I would point out who was brilliant, who’s no longer here is Brittany Murphy,” Daniels said. “Brittany’s a person who never read (the script) the way you thought it was going to be read.”
Luanne married Lucky, voiced by Tom Petty. The singer died in 2017 at 66 from an accidental drug overdose.
“We found opportunities,” Patterson said, “to let them be referenced in the show so that we know the importance that they had both in the characters’ lives. And I feel in a very respectful way that people are going to appreciate.”