The BBC did not show Popetown because it could offend Catholics

The music channel broadcast the first episode of the show, which features a Pope on a pogo stick, last week.

It will now air the remaining nine episodes after viewers "clearly voted in favour of its broadcast", MTV said.

A Munich court rejected an attempt by the city's Roman Catholic archdiocese to ban it for ridiculing Catholics.

The cartoon shows an elderly Pope bouncing through St Peter's in Rome on a cross-like pogo stick and satirises religious ceremonies.

'Not justified'

"In this way the Catholic faith and the Catholic church are exposed to ridicule, which is justified neither by the freedom of opinion, of art, of the press nor of broadcasting," the archdiocese of Munich and Freising said in a statement.

MTV said it wanted to gauge the reaction to the first episode before deciding whether to show the whole series.

"Our decision is based in part on the reaction of the viewers who clearly voted in favour of its broadcast," MTV executive Elmar Giglinger said.

Popetown was commissioned by the BBC in 2002, but later dropped.