And what was the budget for this, pray?

Woah. Rupert Murdoch may well be union-breaking scum, but he knows how to calm me down with magic.

For our transatlantic cousins, a word of explanation. Over here, we have Sky TV. It's our satellite service. Yes. Our only satellite service. We had two, but one was hounded to its premature death by Rupert Murdoch.

Rupe's formula for getting viewers (especially principled scum like me) is simple. Chuck bucketloads of money at it. Either

a) buy the rights to it (anything with a ball or anything cool…)
or
b) give it a budget roughly similar to Switzerland's GNP

This is a bit of both. Sky have the rights to The Simpsons, and to advertise the new season (yeah, like you need to have The Simpsons advertised) they remade the title sequence in live action. It's pretty amazing.

Look for the detail. It's there.