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Danger Mouse (2015 TV series)

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This article is about the 2015 Danger Mouse television series. For the original 1981 series, see Danger Mouse (1981 TV series).
Not to be confused with Danger Mouse (musician).

Danger Mouse
Genre
Based on
Developed byBrian Cosgrove
Directed by
  • Robert Cullen (2015–17)
  • Aidan McAteer (2018–19)
Voices of
Narrated byDave Lamb
Theme music composerMike Harding
Opening theme"Danger Mouse" by Sanj Sen and Phillipa Alexander[N 1]
Ending theme"Danger Mouse" (Short Version) by Sanj Sen and Phillipa Alexander
ComposerSanj Sen
Country of origin
  • United Kingdom
  • Canada (2018–19)
Original languageEnglish
No. of series2
No. of episodes99 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers
  • Chapman Maddox
  • Bob Higgins
  • Tim Searle
  • Brian Cosgrove (2015–16)
Running time11 minutes
22 minutes (special episodes only)
Production companies
Original release
NetworkCBBC
Release28 September 2015 (2015-09-28) –
19 March 2019 (2019-03-19)
Related
Danger Mouse (original series)

Danger Mouse is an animated television series, produced by FremantleMedia and Boulder Media, though it started being produced by Boat Rocker Media in 2018 after they acquired FremantleMedia Kids & Family. The series, which is a revival of the 1981 television series of the same name, revolves around the return of Danger Mouse, the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Secret Agent", and his hamster sidekick Penfold, who protect the world from a variety of dangers. With help from his boss Colonel K and the genius scientist Professor Squawkencluck, Danger Mouse is equipped to defeat his nemesis, Baron Silas von Greenback.

Plans for a revival of Danger Mouse were first considered in 2013, before being announced the following year, with original series co-creator Brian Cosgrove helping to develop the series.[2] The main cast were announced in 2014, with more cast members being announced later in the year. The series premiered on CBBC on 28 September 2015, more than 20 years after the end of the show's original run.[3]

Within three weeks of the series running, Danger Mouse achieved 2.4 million viewers and became the highest rated show on the CBBC channel.[4] On 19 May 2016, the series was commissioned for a second series[5] and on 4 April 2017, for a third series of 26 episodes.[6]

Danger Mouse was the winner of the 'Best Sound Design' and 'Best Music' awards at the 2017 and 2019 Irish Animation Awards.[7][8] Aidan McAteer also picked up the award for 'Best Director' at the 2019 awards.[8]

Production

In 2013, FremantleMedia confirmed to Broadcast that an updated version of the series was being considered,[9][10] and in June 2014 it was announced that a new series consisting of 52 episodes; was being made for broadcast on CBBC in 2015.[11] The series is produced by Boulder Media for Boat Rocker Media, who acquired FremantleMedia's kids and family entertainment business in January 2018.[12]

It is directed by Robert Cullen,[13] with Brian Cosgrove, one of the original creators, as a creative consultant.[14] Alexander Armstrong and Kevin Eldon voice Danger Mouse and Penfold, Dave Lamb takes the role of the narrator, whilst Stephen Fry and Ed Gaughan take on the roles of Colonel K and Baron Greenback respectively.[15] Armstrong's Pointless co-host Richard Osman also appears in the series as Professor Strontium Jellyfishowitz.[16] It was also announced that John Oliver would voice Dr Augustus P. Crumhorn IV and Lena Headey would voice new character Jeopardy Mouse.[17] According to Eldon, the animation style is 'much the same as the original'.[18] The series is animated in Toon Boom Harmony, as the animators thought that Flash was too limited.[19]

The series was picked up by Netflix in several countries, including the United States.[20] In August 2019, CBS All Access acquired the US streaming rights to the series.[21]

Characters

Main characters

  • Danger Mouse (voiced by Alexander Armstrong) is the main protagonist and title character, Danger Mouse is the world's greatest secret agent. Supremely confident in his abilities, Danger Mouse can be narcissistic, which sometimes leads him to take actions that create risky situations.
  • Ernest Penfold (voiced by Kevin Eldon) is a hamster who works as Danger Mouse's assistant and is his best friend. A timid and neurotic boy, he is often known for shouting "Oh, Crumbs!" when frightened. This version is not as misinterpretive as his original counterpart.
  • Colonel K (voiced by Stephen Fry) is a chinchilla who serves as Danger Mouse and Penfold's boss. In the episode "The Return of Danger K", it is revealed that the Colonel was once an agent himself called Danger K. A running gag is he either forgets Penfold's name or who he is. His beard and moustache is a sentient lifeform and now and then detaches itself from his face.
  • Professor Squawkencluck (voiced by Shauna Macdonald) is a chicken who is head scientist of the secret service and Danger Mouse's love interest. She does however get angered by Danger Mouse's devil-may-care attitude, the fact he uses her inventions without permission and when he breaks her latest creation, to the point of a love–hate relationship with him. Revealed in "The World Is Full of Stuff" to be Danger Mouse's future wife. Whether she is any relation to the original series' Prof. Heinrich von Squawkencluck has not as yet been revealed (even though the original Squawkencluck was a mole).
  • Baron Silas von Greenback (voiced by Ed Gaughan) is the main antagonist, a criminal mastermind and Danger Mouse's archenemy. Though Greenback was a mainstay of the 1981 series, in the 2015 series, the prefix "von" (which had previously been incorporated briefly in "Chicken Run", an episode of the original series) has been incorporated into his name. He is given a German accent to match.
  • Nero (vocal effects by Marc Silk) is Greenback's pet fluffy white caterpillar, whose intelligence and duplicity is often underestimated.
  • Stiletto Mafiosa (voiced by Dave Lamb) is Greenback's dim-witted Italian crow sidekick.
  • The Narrator (voice of Lamb), as with the original series, an unseen character, frequently breaks the fourth wall, interacting with both the viewer and the other characters and often finds himself in danger from the episode's antagonist.

Recurring characters

  • Pandaminion (voiced by Gaughan) is a panda and Greenback's newest unintelligent minion.
  • Dr. Loo-cifer (née John) (voiced by Kayvan Novak) is an advanced robotic toilet gone rogue.
  • "Pink" Dawn Crumhorn/The Princess (voiced by Morwenna Banks) is a young spoiled poodle who becomes powerful after her tiara comes into contact with personality-amplifying mind gel. She is later revealed to be the daughter of Doctor Augustus P. Crumhorn IV (and thus, the granddaughter of the original Crumhorn) in "Mousefall".
  • Isambard King Kong Brunel (voiced by Novak) is a scientist monkey who comes up with impractical inventions. He once created a time machine to replace all useful inventions with his own. He is a parody of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a well-known pioneer of engineering, and former chief engineer of the Great Western Railway.
  • Quark (voiced by Gaughan) is a money-hungry alien huckster who tries to use DM in get-rich-quick schemes.
  • The Snowman (voiced by Richard Ayoade)[22] is an embarrassingly inept living snowman with the ability to freeze things with his left arm and fire explosive carrots from his nose.
  • Count Duckula (voiced by Rasmus Hardiker) is a stardom-obsessed vampire duck. This depiction of the character combines aspects of both his villainous counterpart from the original Danger Mouse series, and his more amicable vegetarian counterpart from his own spin-off series. This Count Duckula affirmatively identifies himself as a vegetarian, but also possesses natural fangs and permanent red eyes. He does not display any of the two previous depictions' magical abilities, but is shown to perfectly tolerate sunlight, such that it has no ill effect.
  • Baron Silas von Penfold (voiced by Eldon) is an evil version of Penfold from an alternate reality known as the Twystyverse. He is often seen working alongside his enforcer, Sinister Mouse, as that dimension's greatest supervillains.
  • Sinister Mouse (voiced by Armstrong) is the world's greatest Evil Agent and DM's doppelganger from the Twystyverse.
  • The Queen of Weevils (voiced by Miranda Richardson) is an evil beetle witch from Arthurian Legend, who was sealed away inside a gem over a thousand years ago by Merlin before accidentally being released by DM into the modern world.
  • The Queen (voiced by Banks) is the Queen of the UK. Her depiction as a corgi is a reference to them being kept as pets by the Queen in real life.
  • Jeopardy Mouse (voiced by Lena Headey)[17][23] is the female American equivalent of Danger Mouse. Clad in a slick military jumpsuit and working under orders from General E. Normous Schwartznut, she performs her missions professionally and without fuss—but has a tendency to be overbearing and take herself too seriously.
  • Doctor Augustus P. Crumhorn IV (voiced by John Oliver)[23] is the father of The Princess and the son of Doctor Augustus P. Crumhorn III, he is an ambitious trillionaire Dobermann Pinscher who vows to defeat Danger Mouse in order to make his daughter happy and buy up all the companies in the world. He is completely different from Augustus P Crumhorn III who was a mad scientist.

Episodes

Main article: List of Danger Mouse (2015 TV series) episodes
SeriesEpisodesOriginally aired
First airedLast aired
150 (2 specials)28 September 2015 (2015-09-28)20 October 2016 (2016-10-20)
249 (3 specials)14 June 2017 (2017-06-14)19 March 2019 (2019-03-19)

Home media

Video games

In July 2017, it was announced that an official Danger Mouse mobile game was in development by 9th Impact[24] and the game Danger Mouse: The Danger Games was released on iOS App Store and Google Play Store in August 2017. The game is a multiplayer racing battle with card trading.[25] It was nominated for Best Mobile Game at the 2017 Best of Gamescom awards, but lost to Metroid: Samus Returns.[26] It was also nominated for "Best Racing Game" at The Independent Game Developers' Association Awards 2018, but lost to F1 2017.[27][28]

The game was also released for the Nintendo Switch on September 13, 2018.[29]

DVD releases

The first DVD of the series was released on 2 November 2015.[30] The whole of series 1 has been released across 6 DVDs, with 1 being released in 2015, 2 in 2016 and 3 in 2017. All 2015 episodes have been released for digital download through Amazon and other services.

Region 2
DVD title Series Episode count Total running time Release date(s) Episodes
Danger Mouse: Mission Improbable[30] 1 7 88 mins approx 2 November 2015 "Danger Mouse Begins... Again"
"Planet of the Toilets"
"Danger at C-Level"
"The Other Day the Earth Stood Still"
"Welcome to Danger World"
"Big Head Awakens"
"Greenfinger"
Danger Mouse: Quark Games[31] 9 99 mins approx 15 August 2016 "Quark Games"
"Pink Dawn"
"The World Wide Spider"
"Jeopardy Mouse"
"The Return of Danger K"
"Danger Fan"
"Big Penfold"
"The Unusual Suspects"
"The Inventor Preventor"
Danger Mouse: Merry Christmouse[32] 7 89 mins approx 24 October 2016 "The Snowman Cometh"
"#Sinister Mouse"
"There's No Place Like Greenback"
"Happy Boom Day!"
"Frankensquawk's Monster"
"Escape From Big Head"
"Megahurtz Attacks"
Danger Mouse: The Mouse Awakens[33] 9 105 mins approx 6 February 2017 "The Hamster Effect"
"The Good, the Baaaaa and the Ugly"
"Attack of the Clowns"
"Cheesemageddon"
"Send in the Clones"
"Hail Hydrant"
"Wicked Leaks"
"Queen of Weevils"
"Masters of the Twystyverse"
Danger Mouse: The Agents Who Saved Summer[34] 10 17 July 2017 "Never Say Clever Again"
"Tomorrow Never Comes"
"Half the World Is Enough"
"Danger Is Forever"
"The Spy Who Came in With a Cold"
"Agent 58"
"Thanks a Minion!"
"High School Inedible"
"Mousefall"
"Mouse Rise"
Danger Mouse: From Duck to Dawn[35] 8 93 mins approx 18 September 2017 "From Duck to Dawn"
"The Duckula Show"
"Very Important Penfold"
"The Cute Shall Inherit the Earth"
"All 5 It"
"Dream Worrier"
"The Confidence Trick"
"Sir Danger de Mouse"

Stage adaptation

It was announced in December 2016 that there would be a live stage show based on the TV series in 2017. The show is being produced by FremantleMedia who created the series for CBBC and is also produced by Butlins holiday park where it toured around all three of its parks from Easter 2017 until January 2018.[36] The show is titled Robo Mop. The stage show returned in 2018.

Merchandising

Jazwares is the master toy partner, Penguin Books publish a range of printed books, including story books, official guides, sticker books, novelty books, annuals and electronic titles and D.C. Thomson & Co. have started publishing a monthly magazine (from July 2016) with comic strips, puzzles, fact files, poster and competitions.[37] Marc Silk read Danger Mouse audiobooks, the first one being released on 2 June 2016.[38] A Danger Mouse Scribble Book was also released on 2 June 2016, as well as Sticky Situations! Colouring Book[39][40] and License to Chill.[41]

Notes

  1. ^ The original broadcast of the episode "The Good, the Baaaaa and the Ugly" features various fans of the series performing the vocals of the theme tune.

References

  1. ^ "DangerMouse". Windmill Lane. Windmill Lane. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  2. ^ "Danger Mouse: Still 'the greatest' secret agent in the world?". BBC News. 28 September 2015.
  3. ^ "WATCH: New 'Danger Mouse' Trailer Now Online". Animation World Network. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  4. ^ "DANGER MOUSE IS THE BIGGEST NEW HIT OF THE YEAR FOR KIDS". Fremantle Media. Archived from the original on 27 May 2018. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  5. ^ "BBC - World's greatest secret agent Danger Mouse given extended mission on CBBC - Media Centre". bbc.co.uk.
  6. ^ "CBBC gives Danger Mouse third mission". C21media.
  7. ^ "2017 Winners". Animation Ireland. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  8. ^ a b "2019 Winners". Animation Ireland. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  9. ^ "'Danger Mouse' reboot considered after CITV Old Skool weekend success". Digital Spy. 12 March 2013.
  10. ^ "FremantleMedia eyes Danger Mouse reboot". broadcastnow.co.uk. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  11. ^ "Danger Mouse to return to TV screens". BBC News. 17 June 2014. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  12. ^ White, Peter (25 January 2018). "FremantleMedia Moves Out Of Kids Content, Sells Unit To Canada's Boat Rocker". Deadline. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  13. ^ Koch, Dave (18 June 2014). "Three New Animated Series, Reboots All". Big Cartoon News. Archived from the original on 20 June 2014. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  14. ^ "BBC – Danger Mouse back on TV as new series announced for CBBC – Media Centre". bbc.co.uk.
  15. ^ "Danger Mouse to be voiced by Alexander Armstrong".
  16. ^ "Stephen Fry and Richard Osman join cast of CBBC's Danger Mouse". Prolific North. December 2014.
  17. ^ a b Ben Beaumont-Thomas (13 July 2015). "Crumbs! Lena Headey and John Oliver join Danger Mouse remake". the Guardian.
  18. ^ "Kevin Eldon on Danger Mouse reboot: 'It's pretty imaginative'". WOW247. Archived from the original on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  19. ^ Thill, Scott (11 April 2015). "Rebooting 'Danger Mouse' For A New Generation: Interview with Directors Robert Cullen and Paul O'Flanagan". Cartoon Brew. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  20. ^ Jacob Kastrenakes (25 February 2015). "Netflix picks up Inspector Gadget and Danger Mouse reboots". The Verge. Vox Media.
  21. ^ "CBS All Access Adding Children's Programming; 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs', 'Danger Mouse', 'Inspector Gadget' Among Content". 8 August 2019.
  22. ^ Powder Blue Internet Business Solutions. "Richard Ayoade joins Danger Mouse". chortle.co.uk. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  23. ^ a b Ben Beaumont-Thomas (13 July 2015). "Crumbs! Lena Headey and John Oliver join Danger Mouse remake". the Guardian. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
  24. ^ "FremantleMedia teams with 9th Impact for Danger Mouse app". Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  25. ^ "The Danger Mouse App 'The Danger Games' is here – Ireland's Technology Blog". Ireland’s Technology Blog. 23 August 2017. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  26. ^ "Super Mario Odyssey Walks Away with Lots of Gamescom Awards". 25 August 2017.
  27. ^ Stephenson, Suzi (19 September 2018). "TIGA Announces Games Industry Awards 2018 Finalists". The Independent Game Developers' Association. Retrieved 22 September 2018.
  28. ^ "2018 Winners". The Independent Game Developers' Association. 1 November 2018. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  29. ^ "The world's number one mobile and handheld videogame website | Pocket Gamer".
  30. ^ a b "Danger Mouse – Mission: Improbable: DVD & Blu-ray". Amazon.co.uk.
  31. ^ "Danger Mouse: Quark Games [DVD]". Amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  32. ^ "Danger Mouse: Merry Christmouse [DVD]". Amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  33. ^ "Danger Mouse: The Mouse Awakens". 6 February 2017 – via Amazon.
  34. ^ "Danger Mouse: The Agents Who Saved Summer". 17 July 2017 – via Amazon.
  35. ^ "Danger Mouse: From Duck to Dawn". Amazon UK.
  36. ^ "Danger Mouse is Live at Butlin's in 2017 - Butlins". Butlins.
  37. ^ "Jazwares, Penguin and DC Thomson sign with Danger Mouse". licensing.biz.
  38. ^ Penfold, Ernest; Silk, Marc (2 June 2016). Danger Mouse: Licence to Chill: Case Files Fiction Book 1. Penguin. ASIN 0141371099.
  39. ^ Danger Mouse: Scribble Book. Puffin. 2 June 2016. ASIN 0141366850.
  40. ^ Danger Mouse: Sticky Situations!: Sticker Activity Book. Puffin. 2 June 2016. ASIN 0141373113.
  41. ^ Penfold, Ernest (2 June 2016). "Danger Mouse: Licence to Chill: Case Files Fiction Book 1". Puffin – via Amazon.
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