Ah, yes.  With all the painfully vapid crap polluting the tube these days, I never understood why Futurama, a legitimately entertaining show with a sizeable fanbase, was left languishing in the TV graveyard.  What’s more, the fact that the post-Fox DVD specials were every bit as smart and funny as the series itself showed that the cartoon still had some life left in it.

Well, in a surprising turn of events a group of television executives managed to extract their crania from the opposite end of the body long enough to make a decent decision.  The consequence is that Futurama will be back on our screens at some point in mid-2010.  While Fox have retained the option to broadcast the first run, Comedy Central will likely be the ones airing the twenty-six new episodes.

There are numerous nuggets of good news peppered throughout this story, but here are a few of the most promising:

Voice actors Billy West (who played Philip Fry), Katey Sagal (Leela) and John DiMaggio (Bender) have all signed on to return.

…

Writing has already begun on the show; Groening said he was inspired by the “Star Trek” movie this summer enough that the updated “Futurama” may take a similar tact to explain the launch of this run.

Beyond that, Groening said he and Cohen already have a pile of potential episode storylines that they never got around to producing during “Futurama’s” original incarnation.

“David and I have ideas that we knocked around before we even began the first series,” Groening said. “And we haven’t gotten to everything yet.”