Happy 30th, DangerMouse!     (06.09.11)
  

   Crumbs, Chief. Would you believe, DangerMouse is thirty years
   old this Autumn? Cosgrove Hall's madcap, action-packed,
   animated series premiered on ITV on 28th September 1981
   which means that DM and his trustless sidekick Ernest
   Penfold have been out there thwarting that scheming Machiavellian
   amphibian Baron Silas Greenback and his nefarious cronies for
   three whole decades.

   "DangerMouse" broke the British teatime mould, didn't it?
   It was loud and anarchic and in-your-face, with bomb-bastic
   titles and a preposterous blend of ITC action and Pythonesque
   right-hand turns and dead-ends in its storytelling. It was
   a world away from the Watch With Mother whimsy that
   dominated our screens, and it arrived at just the right time,
   as if it were some absurd antidote to the doom and gloom
   tv headlines that were dominated by stories of mass 
   unemployment and a Summer of riots.

   "DangerMouse" celebrated a peculiarly British brand of stupidity,
   it ridiculed its heroes and villains alike, it mocked not-so Great
   Britain and the world at large by way of its ludicrous Narrator,
   Isembard, and it even broke the Fourth Wall on occasion to
   chastise its own production team. There's no doubt that some
   of that inventiveness was inspired by the constraints of its
   budget - there was lots of repetition in the show, and many
   pitch black scenes - but that was all just part of the charm 
   of the thing. David Jason, Terry Scott and Edward Kelsey
   were at the top of their game, riffing on the absurdity of it all
   in their sound booth, and giving each episode a freewheeling,
   Goon-like quality (you can see them working here).

   So here we are, three decades on, we've gone full circle and are
   once more emerging from a Summer of torrid, flame-fueled
   headlines. Perhaps it's an omen. Perhaps it's time for the
   nation to embrace the absurd once more, and celebrate
   this amazing, astounding British mouse again...?
   
    

   As part of the DM celebrations, FremantleMedia Enterprises is
   releasing DangerMouse: The Complete Collection 30th Anniversary
   Edition which is billed as a ten-disc DVD box set featuring every
   single episode of the series presented, at last, in their correct
   screening order. And that's a Big Deal, deserving of capital letters,
   because fans have felt just a little shortchanged by previous
   muddled releases. Alas, the extras peg the set back just a little.
   There's the original pilot episode, and more, but they've all been
   seen before. "DangerMouse and Friends" is the main new
   featurette. Oh, a commentary-or-two would have been great,
   don't you think? Still, despite the double-dipping it's a big fat
   box set of fun, and certainly the best release we've seen in the
   UK, thus far. It hits stores on or around 26th September.

   Oh, and whilst we're waiting for that, there's a viral tie-in you
   can drop by, in the form of The DangerMouse Fan Hub, with
   clips and snippets and nostalgic celebration to keep you in
   the mood for mayhem!...
    
                                              More: DangerMouse Fan Hub

 
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