Danger Mouse & Greenback Comeback?
He’s the greatest, he’s fantastic, wherever there is danger he’ll be there, and he’s rumoured to be returning to a tv set near you.
Ooh-eck! Danger Mouse, the world’s greatest secret agent, could soon be enjoying new adventures according to industry bosses due to the popularity of his recent tv appearance.
Back in January, DM and his faithful sidekick Penfold proved to the nation that they were still as popular as ever when they topped the tv ratings during CITV’s Old Skool retro weekend, scoring an audience of 569,000 viewers – the digital channels highest ever viewing figures.
Now FremantleMedia’s Kids and Family Entertainment have expressed an interested in reinstating the crime fighting rodent. Company president, Sander Schwartz remarked that the series “is something we might be looking to do in the not-too-distant future.”
ITV originally broadcast the series but Fremantle has a five year kids’ programming deal already struck with CBBC, so there could be an interesting tug of war over who get the proposed new series.Danger Mouse was produced by Cosgrove Hall Films for Thames Television between 1981 and 1992. Over 10 series, 161 episode were made, and it later spawned it’s own spin-off series Count Duckula. DM was famously voiced by the David Jason, Terry Scott (who passed away in 1994) as bespectacled hamster Penfold and Edward Kelsey, voiced both DM’s boss Colonel K and his archenemy wheezy-voiced toad Baron Silas Greenback. Danger Mouse was fluent in 34 languages, including some alien dialects, and he was a practitioner in the ancient martial art Kung Moggy.
Various whispers of a remake have been floating around for years and these latest rumours of a revamp for a modern audience raises a lot of questions and concerns for life long fans. Will the new show live up to the expectations of the original? Will Danger Mouse continue to be a hand drawn 2D character? Will the surviving voice artists return to reprise their role after such a long time? Tune in next time to find out!
The show was always a loose parody of British spy fiction. Personally I’d love to see a spoof of Skyfall, in which we rejoin the cartoon rodent, after he has been off the radar for several years drinking and womanising. Colonel K fights to reinstate him as a secret agent after his 20 year absence, but I’m guessing this probably wont happen…