A.N.T. Farm

A.N.T. Farm is an American television sitcom that premiered on May 6, 2011 as a special preview and continued as a regular series on June 17, 2011. The pilot episode, "TransplANTed" aired after the series finale of The Suite Life on Deck. The series was created by Dan Signer, a former writer and co-executive producer of The Suite Life on Deck. In mid-November 2010, Disney Channel green-lit the series, with production beginning in early 2011. The first promo was released during the premiere of Lemonade Mouth.

The series stars China Anne McClain, Sierra McCormick and Jake Short as middle-schoolers in a gifted program at their local high school called their "Advanced Natural Talents" program or A.N.T.

Premise
A.N.T. Farm centers around Chyna Parks (China Anne McClain), an 11-year-old music prodigy, who has just become the newest A.N.T. (Advanced Natural Talents) in the A.N.T. program at Webster High School in San Francisco, California. On her first day, she meets Olive Doyle (Sierra McCormick), a girl who has an eidetic memory, and Fletcher Quimby (Jake Short), an artistic genius who develops a crush on her, and they soon become her best friends at the high school. They proceed to go on multiple adventures, using their talents to their advantage. The school's "it" girl, Lexi Reed (Stefanie Scott), proceeds to bully Chyna, thinking of her as competition in being the star of the school. Chyna's older brother Cameron (Carlon Jeffery) attempts to avoid Chyna in high school as much as he can, afraid she will be an embarrassment to him.

Development
Disney Channel announced on November 11, 2010 that they had green-lighted the show for production, which began in early 2011. The show was first conceived when Dan Signer, creator of the show, saw China Anne McClain. "The girl had so much confidence. She can nail a joke. She can sing. She can play instruments. It's like China was some sort of child prodigy [...] And that's when it hit me: Why not build a show around a child prodigy? Someone who's got all of this natural talent & ability but is still challenged when she's sent off to high school at the age of 11?" Signer said in an interview. After the first few episodes of the show were shown, Disney Channel bumped up their order of episodes for the show from 13 episodes to 21 episodes for the first season.

Casting
Sierra McCormick was cast after an audition where she continually talked about tigers. Dan Signer stated "And as I heard her continually talking about tigers, I thought 'That's just how Olive would sound.' Which is how Sierra got that part." Jake Short was the last of the three core characters to be cast.

Main characters

 * Chyna Parks (China Anne McClain) is an 11-year-old music prodigy who is part of the A.N.T. program in her brother's high school. In ParticipANTs, she becomes a cheerleader, only to be tricked by Lexi into losing her voice so she can't audition for the school play. In Bad RomANTs, it is said she thinks better with her guitar. She is very kind, although she she seems to be as embarrassed of her brother as he is of her.
 * Olivia "Olive" Doyle (Sierra McCormick) is Chyna's best friend and part of the A.N.T program because of her eidetic memory. She can speak Japanese as is mentioned in SciANTs Fair, talks very quickly, and is afraid of several things including spiders, leprechauns, ghosts, and Curly Fries curly fries.
 * Fletcher Quimby (Jake Short) is an artistic genius whose best friends are Chyna and Olive. But he thinks of Chyna as more than a friend, even though he fails at flirting with her many times. He tries all kinds of art, from sculpting Chyna out of bubblegum to making wax dummies of everyone to painting the principal.
 * Alexis "Lexi" Reed (Stefanie Scott) is a pretty, self-centered student at Webster High who is the lead in all of the musicals, freshman president of student council and is on the cheer-leading squad with Paisley. She is an airhead, will do anything to get positive attention, and can be mean-spirited.
 * Cameron Parks (Carlon Jeffery) is Chyna's older high-schooler brother. He tries to avoid Chyna and the other ANTs because he is afraid Chyna will embarrass him. In The PhANTom Locker, it is mentioned he has a blankie, and once was so annoyed by Olive that he covers her locker with jelly and calls it ghost ectoplasm. Lexi mistakes him for Chyna's younger brother, because he often acts much less mature than his younger sister.

Recurring characters

 * Paisley (Alexandria DeBerry) is best friends with Lexi. She is also on the cheer squad, even though she's clueless about almost every cheer. She is often confused about everything that's going on. However, she thinks different from Lexi, because she usually cares about people. She's a sweet-spirited girl, but cluelessly gets roped into Lexi's schemes. Both easily fooled and free with compliments, she is treated badly by Lexi despite them being "best friends."
 * Gibson (Zach Steel) is the A.N.T.’s counselor, tutor, and therapist. He is shown to be a dumb person and more of a child than an adult. He likes knitting, mahjong, and feeding pigeons. He doesn't like his grandmother's boyfriend, Bob, and made up a game about himself called "Gibson Pursuit."
 * Angus Chestnut (Aedin Mincks) is a computer genius who often runs illegal programs on his computer. He has a huge crush on Olive, though finds Chyna unattractive, and found someone whose name was never mentioned within five seconds. In the first episode, he is trampled by the "big kids" during passing period and goes to the hospital. He is also shown to love food.
 * Darryl Parks (Finesse Mitchell) is a 'highly decorated' police officer, and is Chyna's and Cameron's dad. Though he obviously loves his daughter, he can be very overprotective. He considered pulling her out of the ANT program after the first episode because he thought she wasn't ready for high school.
 * Roxanne Parks (Elise Neal) is Chyna's and Cameron's mom. She is a children's party entertainer. The only time she was shown she was dressed as a Viking and carrying a battle ax.
 * Susan Skidmore (Mindy Sterling) is the school principal. She's completely convinced herself that she is young and beautiful, not believing that the person in the mirror is her. She uses the A.N.T Program like a sweatshop, forcing Fletcher to paint a portrait of herself for her 'boyfriend'.

Episodes

 * Main article: List of A.N.T. Farm episodes

Soundtrack

 * Main article: A.N.T. Farm Soundtrack

The A.N.T. Farm Soundtrack is a Disney Channel soundtrack from the TV series, A.N.T. Farm. It is currently scheduled to be released on October 11, 2011. In addition to songs by China Anne McClain and cast members Stefanie Scott and Carlon Jeffery, it will feature 2 songs by China and her sisters as the McClain Sisters leading up to their debut album on Hollywood Records in 2012.

Track Listing

 * 1) Exceptional by China Anne McClain
 * 2) Dynamite by China Anne McClain
 * 3) Unstoppable by China Anne McClain
 * 4) My Crush by China Anne McClain
 * 5) Calling All The Monsters by China Anne McClain
 * 6) Beautiful by China Anne McClain
 * 7) Pose by Stefanie Scott ft. Carlon Jeffery
 * 8) Summertime by Carlon Jeffery
 * 9) Electronic Apology by the McClain Sisters
 * 10) Perfect Mistake by the McClain Sisters

Critical reception
The series's premiere earned mixed reviews. It also currently holds a 6.0 making "Fair" rating (based on 56 votes) on TV.com, and 5.2/10 rating (based on 142 votes and 5 reviews) on IMDb.com.

Ratings
The sneak preview of the series earned 4.4 million viewers on its premiere night, ranked as TV’s No. 1 Telecast in Total Day among Tweens 9-14 (441,000/1.8 rating) and was also TV’s No. 1 Telecast among Kids 6-11 (544,000/2.2 rating). Its lead-in, the series finale of The Suite Life on Deck, got 4.6 million.

The episode "The PhANTom Locker", is currently the most watched episode of the series, scoring 4.6 million viewers. It did better than its lead-in Wizards of Waverly Place, which got 4 million viewers.