Good grief!
Yep, we were as excited as The Pointer Sisters on Valium when the BBC announced that they were producing a new series of classic cartoon Danger Mouse last year. And now, it’s finally hit our screens. So the question remains: is it any good?
Simply put: yes. More comprehensively: hell yes. Everything is here, from the quintessentially British sense of Monty Python-level humour, to taking a sledgehammer to the fourth wall in a way that even Deadpool would balk at. The animation is slick, while still in keeping with the original. Visually, it is a treat for the eyes.
The cast slide into their roles pretty easily. Kevin Eldon is channeling the ghost of Terry Scott in his voicing of Penfold, in a way that is more than a little spooky. Stephen Fry’s Colonel K is, if anything, even more bumblingly eccentric than the original – never a bad thing. And while Alexander Armstrong will never be David Jason, he still fits the bill of DM’s traditionally English stiff-upper-lip persona. The script is smart and punchy, quickly explaining that the world has moved on since the last series in 1992 while DM himself really hasn’t.
So, is it perfect? No, nothing is. The theme tune’s reworking is frankly crap and it baffles me why head villain Baron Silas Greenback has become German in the intervening 20 years. He’s now Baron von Greenback and has a cod-German accent, for some unexplained reason. But it’s once again small things that are really just minor niggles. DM’s back, and he’s great.
4.5/5 Nerds
Danger Mouse is broadcast daily at 6pm on the CBBC channel
Dave Bowling
Dave was born at an early age to parents of both sexes. He has been a self-confessed geek for as long as he can remember, having been raised through the 80s on a steady diet of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Red Dwarf and (sigh) Knight Rider. Throw the usual assortment of Saturday morning cartoons into the mix and we have something quite exceptional: someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge of utter tosh; a love of giant robots and spaceships fighting; and the strange desire to leap tall buildings in a single bound while wearing his underpants over his trousers. The death ray is currently in the works and one day you shall all bow to him, his giant space station and fleet of funky orange space shuttles...
Nerd Comments