The Simpsons started 25 years ago, a creation of cartoonist Matt Groening. He made international icons of slob father Homer, kind mother Marge, smart daughter Lisa and naughty son Bart. Family Guy started 13 years ago, a creation of Seth McFarlane, a Simpsons fan who wanted to go further with the idea of an adult cartoon that parodied traditional sitcoms. He gave us slob father Peter, patient mother Lois, moronic son Chris, desperate daughter Meg, talking dog Brian and malevolent infant Stewie.

Their first collaboration opens the new season of Family Guy, which plays on US television next Sunday and will be fast-tracked here two days later by 7Mate.

Groening told Entertainment Weekly of his reaction when he saw Family Guy years ago: "My first take was, 'Oh my god, we got competition'. And they're outflanking us. This show is wilder and harsher and nastier. We used to get in trouble. We used to be the cause of the downfall of the United States."

And there's the issue. When it started, The Simpsons alarmed some adults because it provoked kids to ask questions about racism, religious bigotry and political hypocrisy. But in the end, parents realised it was subtly teaching values they wanted their children to grow up with: tolerance, flexibility, loyalty, generosity and skepticism about dogma.

Groening is an old hippy who wants everybody to love each other. McFarlane is a slick GenXer who wants everybody to love him.

The Simpsons is a show for intelligent kids and their humanist parents. It's sometimes funny and often silly. Family Guy is a show for sex-obsessed 17-year-old boys and cynical seniors. It's often funny and sometimes disturbing. If you want your kids to ask about paedophilia, anal sex, necrophilia, bestiality, masturbation, torture and physical handicaps, you let them watch Family Guy.

Here's a summary of the rest of the new season of Family Guy: the Christmas episode, called The 2000-Year-Old-Virgin, will feature the return of Jesus, who will try to have sex for the first time. In Kicking Arse, Peter will beat up guest star Liam Neeson. In Stewie is Enceinte, Stewie becomes pregnant with Brian's baby. And in This Little Piggy, Meg becomes a foot fetish model. They do not sound as if they could ever be episodes of The Simpsons.

Expert cartoon makers don't necessarily agree with me. Jim Ballantine, who worked in Los Angeles for 20 years at Disney and Nickelodeon and is now executive producer of the Sydney animation company Flying Bark (makers of Blinky Bill), has not seen the crossover episode but thinks the audiences for the two shows are "pretty similar".

"Simpsons has a wider family demographic that includes the fanboy 14-24 year old animation devotees who love Family Guy," he said. "Family Guy has a more specific and male-centric audience but Family Guy fans would most certainly also be Simpsons fans; not necessarily vice versa.

"There is a huge amount of crossover with the writing and story talent working on both shows and I can see how they would enjoy doing a crossover episode. Plus, both are on Fox network in the US and provides a great opportunity for cross promotion."

There have been cartoon crossovers in the past, but they've always been between shows that appeal to similar audiences. There was a movie in which The Jetsons met The Flintstones (both Hanna-Barbera), and episodes in which The Simpsons met Futurama (both Matt Groening) and Family Guy met American Dad (both Seth McFarlane). The most famous animeld was the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which has a wonderful scene in which Daffy Duck, after attempting to sing a song with Donald Duck, expostulates: "Thith ith the latht time I work with thomebody with a thpeech impediment". It worked for nostalgic adults without confusing the kids.

The Simpsons Guy airs on Tuesday, September 30, at 8.30pm on 7Mate. 

Loyal little sister

Sonia Kruger is inclined to agree that Big Brother seems more sadistic this year than in recent years. In the first few days of this season, two housemates were offered $10,000 each if they forced all the housemates to eat only meal replacement shakes for a week. Would they be selfish or would they be sharing? They took the cash. And then Big Brother offered to sell them hamburgers for $500 each.

"I've been trying to find another word for sadistic," Kruger says. "Psychologically he's really putting them all to the test this year. What's a word that describes sadism but in a kind of fun way, because I enjoy it and I think the general public enjoy it? Everyone I've spoken to has just loved the fact that this is what we're doing."

How come a nice girl like Sonia Kruger finds herself enjoying cruelty? "Why oh why? Well, the housemates know when they sign up for Big Brother that anything could happen. We're not springing it on innocent people. That makes me feel a little bit less guilty. And it's all in the name of good fun. I'm not a prankster, I'm not a pot stirrer, but I love it when other people do it. I enjoy it vicariously, you could say."

At least the voting process this year will be less sadistic. Starting this week, the viewers will be asked to vote for who they want to keep in the house rather than who they want to evict. The couple that gets the least "stay" votes will be evicted on Wednesday.

Kruger thinks this is a smart strategy to ensure the most interesting characters stick around.

"When it's vote to evict, people will automatically gravitate towards the most annoying person in the house, somebody that really for some reason ticks off the Australian public," she says. "You don't want to lose all your polarising people. When they're voting to save, the focus shifts, so those annoying characters will kind of slip through. From an entertainment point of view, it is good to keep them in there."

So who would Kruger most like to see evicted? She says she has to stay impartial, but in any case, her opinions keep changing.

"I meet them on the opening night and then I watch the daily show and people that you like at the beginning of the series you don't necessarily like at the end. You fall in and out of love with these characters.

"Last year, Tim, who ultimately was the winner of Big Brother 2013, when he first came out onto the stage and into the house, I just thought, 'This guy's going to drive everybody crazy'. And he did. But we developed a bit of affection for his larrikinism.

"This year I think Lawson the magician turned electrician is really going to turn out to be quite a fun sort of person. Also Sam, who is the paralympian. When he was competing at the Paralympics he told a journalist in America that his leg had been chewed off by a kangaroo. She reported it as fact, and he got into trouble."

Kruger says she's feeling much more comfortable as presenter now that she understands how Big Brother works. "With the very first series on Nine, I agreed to do it and I don't know if I really thought about it too deeply. A week before the show, I started trying to think of ways to fake my own death. I thought, 'What am I doing, this is a huge show and it's such a big investment by the network, and Gretel Killeen was such an iconic host.' The fans are so passionate about it and if you put a foot wrong they will tell you.

"Now I feel at home in the show and the fans seem to be happy."

She may be less comfortable on the final night, when she will be 30 weeks pregnant. "We'll keep some towels and hot water on standby. And there is a midwife in the house this year, so she could prove handy."

Big Brother's first eviction is on Wednesday at 8.40pm on Nine.

The needy media

In an interview to be broadcast tonight on CNN, Cate Blanchett reveals herself to be less than a fan of social media. An actor should value audience feedback, she says, but "you need to learn which voices to buffer off and which to listen to".  She finds social media oppressive and she doesn't want to participate in it: "If you were a human piece of social media and walked around to everyone every 10 seconds asking, 'Do you like me, do you like me?', that's ostensibly what you're doing. You'd think, 'Get away!'

"If social media was made into a human being, you'd think, 'I do not want to have dinner with you'. It's the worst part of us as a species. It's a useful thing, but you've got to know how to handle it and you've go to know when to walk away from it."

Blanchett does not do a lot of television work, but she reveals a childhood fascination with TV themes.

"I was listening to all of those television tunes and I loved that show Green Acres. My mother sat me down and she said, 'Listen to the lyrics. Green Acres is the place to be, farm living is the life for me. And the man said you are my wife and the wife said goodbye city life. She gave up everything for her husband.' My mother said, 'Is that the life you want to live?' I said, 'What do you mean? It's just a song', as you do when you're a teenager." Blanchett's mother responded: "Respect yourself!".

Who knew it was a TV sitcom that started Our Cate's rise to glory?

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