The writing is clever and is designed to appeal to adults as well as children.
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He´s the greatest. He´s fantastic. Wherever there is trouble, he´ll be there. He´s Dangermouse, the world´s smallest secret agent. The new DVD boxed set from A&E brings you Seasons Three and Four (which aired from 1982-1983 in Britain) in their entirety, fourteen episodes in all.
"Dangermouse" is a bit of pop culture detritus that floated right past me when I was a kid. Maybe it hadn´t made it across the Atlantic yet. Dangermouse is a British secret agent who makes his headquarters in a postbox on Baker Street. He solves mysteries across the globe, aided by his bespectacled sidekick Penfold (something vaguely resembling a hamster) whose nickname is "Jigsaw" because he always falls to pieces. Each episode is set into motion by a call from the constantly befuddled Colonel K (who is just an L away from being M) who informs of the next grave danger that threatens world peace.
Whatever the danger is, it always stems from the same source, the evil Baron Silas Greenback, a loathsome toad, and his toadies (pun intended) Nero (who looks like a tribble that got run through a sausage maker) and the Sicilian crow Stiletto Mafiosa. Baron Greenback is a conglomeration of every Bond villain ever created with a dash of Boris and Natasha from "Bullwinkle" thrown in.
In fact, "Rocky and Bullwinkle" is probably the best comparison for "Dangermouse," which features ample amounts of more sophisticated humor designed to appeal to adults along with all the funny talking animals the kids love. Both series also made extensive use of a narrator to advance the action. Each episode follows the same formula. Dangermouse gets the call to action, slides down the chute into his flying spy car and rushes off to solve the mystery, eventually unmasking Baron Greenback and the gang and saving the day. Along the way, Penfold messes everything up and Dangermouse picks up the pieces.
The animation is crude but also highly imaginative. The show borrows at least some of its cues from the groundbreaking animation from "Yellow Submarine" and delights in its off-kilter cartoon logic and heavy use of animate objects. The episodes come in two different flavors. Most of them are multi-part stories (usually five or six parts) that run 25 minutes long. A few shorter cartoons run just 11 minutes long and are not broken into chapters like the longer ones.
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