A.N.T. Farm

A.N.T. Farm is a Disney Channel 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 and creator of the Disney XD series Mr. Young. 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 "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 Ann Parks (China Anne McClain) is a musical prodigy, who at eleven can play more instruments than most people can name, including guitar, piano, violin, trumpet, saxophone, flute, cello, harp, bagpipes, French horn, Theremin, drums, harmonica, and the spoons. She’s also an amazing singer, blowing people away with her big, soulful voice. Never afraid of a challenge, she sees high school as an exciting place. Unfortunately, she’s going to have to drag her new friends out of their shells to to experience it.
 * Olive Daphne Doyle (Sierra McCormick) is a human computer. Thanks to her eidetic memory, everything she’s ever read, heard, or seen is permanently etched in her brain. Unfortunately, there are some things you want to forget. Olive, always ready with a fact about pretty much everything, is something of an over-thinker. She’d rather hide in the safety of the Ant Farm, but her new friend Chyna is not going to let that happen.
 * Fletcher Pumpernickel Quimby (Jake Short) is an artistic genius, gifted in all media – painting, sculpture, drawing, you name it. But to him, the most beautiful work of art is Chyna. He falls for her the first moment he sees her, though has trouble keeping his crush a secret when he’s constantly immortalizing her in his art.
 * Lexi Reed (Stefanie Scott) Lexi Reed is Chyna’s biggest rival at Webster High. She is the series main antagonist. Chyna may be the leader of the ANTs, but Lexi is Queen Bee. This teen is super popular and she super knows it. She is the star of every school play. At least she was, until Chyna showed up. She becomes Student-Body President. She is a sophmore.
 * Cameron Parks (Carlon Jeffery) is Chyna’s older brother, though he spends a lot of time in her shadow. While she’s a prodigy, he’s not especially gifted at anything, but is determined to find something at which he excels. He’s not thrilled that his kid sister is at his school, so he tries to keep his distance. But, when push comes to shove, Cameron will step up to help her. Though more often than not, she even comes to his rescue. He is under five feet tall, even as a sophmore.

Recurring characters

 * Paisley Houndstooth (Allie 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 and dim-witted 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 in "Bad RomANTs", he has gotten back together with his childhood girlfriend despite the fact that she's in jail.
 * Angus Chestnut (Aedin Mincks) is a computer genius who often runs illegal programs on his computer disguised as video games. Though finds Chyna unattractive, he has a huge, but unrequited, crush on Olive. Because of the extensive time he spends on his computer, he is quite lazy and often complains about doing basic physical tasks, such as walking in between classes. Because of this, all classes that he's chosen are on the ground floor of the school so he never has to walk up or down stairs.
 * Darryl Parks (Finesse Mitchell), a 'highly decorated' police officer, and is Chyna and Cameron's dad. Though he obviously loves his daughter, he can be very overprotective. He appears to be a cheap person. It has been shown that people often mistake him for being a mall cop.
 * Roxanne Parks (Elise Neal) is Chyna and Cameron's mom. She is a children's party entertainer. So far, she has appeared in three episodes, but has been mentioned in some episodes. Although she is busy with her work, she still loves her kids.
 * Principal Susan Skidmore (Mindy Sterling) is the school principal. She's completely convinced herself that she is young and beautiful, to the point where she cannot believe her own reflection is her. She uses the A.N.T Program like a sweatshop. She says the reason for the A.N.T Farm is for her to use their talents for her own use.
 * Wacky The Wolf is the taciturn school mascot. Wackys true appreance is never shown, despite that he is good friends with Chyna, Olive and Fletcher. Wacky is shown to take his job as school mascot very seriously

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

Critical reception
The series's premiere earned mixed reviews. It also currently holds a 7.4 making "Good" rating (based on 96 votes) on TV.com, and 4.8/10 rating (based on 263 votes and 7 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.