The following conversation actually took place.  I was at work.  I called home to see how my wife, Karen, was doing. 

Karen:  Hey, you got a package today from DIMP.  Do you want me to open it and see what it is?

Cary:  Sure.

Karen:  It’s Danger Mouse – The Final Seasons.

Cary:  Fuck.

You see, Danger Mouse was something I completely missed.  I remember sometime back in high school a friend tried to show me a couple of episodes on video tape but I just wasn’t into it.  It was 1986 and I was much more concerned with getting laid.

Danger Mouse had nothing to offer me in that regard and so I ignored it.  When my wife said I had a box set of them sitting at home for my review, I pictured hours of my life drifting away while I watched a shitty cartoon, all the while gritting my teeth and slugging back Jack Daniels in an effort to ease the pain.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Danger Mouse is as intelligent, humorous and fun as any animated show on television today.  It may not speak to current issues like South Park does.  It may not be as culturally significant to American audiences as The Simpsons is.  However, the humor works for adults and children alike and, like those shows, many of the laughs are dialogue driven.  It’s not all about violence and mayhem a la Tom and Jerry - not that there’s anything wrong with that. 

More seasoned fans of British comedy will find themselves laughing out loud pretty regularly.  The show’s sense of humor owes just as much to Abbott and Costello as it does to Monty Python.  Danger Mouse and his cohorts speak in dialects and accents that are extremely British (a potential problem for younger viewers), but my four year old liked watching them with me even though she didn’t understand a lot of what was going on. 

The premise is simple.  Danger Mouse is a secret agent.  He’s accompanied by his sidekick, Penfold, who is a mole with eyesight only slightly better than Mr. Magoo’s.  Penfold is not only blind, but possibly the biggest pussy ever to grace the small screen.  That said, he's also the funniest part of any given episode. 

For example, when a fish eats an important document in Penfold’s possession, the bad guys capture and torture him in hopes of making him talk.  Prior to anyone laying a hand on him, Penfold immediately tells everyone that a fish ate the document.  No one believes him and thus begins the torture scenarios, each a lot of fun, where no matter how loud or to who he tells his story to, no one believes him.  Even Danger Mouse commends him on his bravery. 

It never gets gruesome or even controversial like, say, South Park would, but Penfold’s protestations are absolutely hilarious.

While most episodes feature a new “enemy”, there are some recurring ones.  My first clue that watching Danger Mouse – The Final Seasons was going to be a pleasant experience came early in the first episode when Baron Von Greenback (the Blofeld to Danger Mouse’s Bond) announced his plan to pave over Europe’s most visited tourist attractions so that people would be forced to visit his museum. 

The joke? 

The museum is dedicated to showing off Barry Manilow record sleeves.  If that makes you smile, you should watch at least a couple of these episodes.

Script-wise, the two strongest episodes are Turn of the Tide and Where There’s A Well There’s A Way.  The former finds civilization underwater due to a switch in the ocean tides.  It features long stretches of “Who’s on First” style interactions between Penfold and Danger Mouse that had me rolling.  Where There’s A Well There’s A Way concerns the search for Merlin’s magic ink well.  Here, the comedy is focused on Penfold’s lack of balls when confronting old castles, bats and evil magicians.  Both of these episodes have insane amounts of jokes per minute. 

Overall, though, my biggest complaint is that the series is somewhat hit and miss.  Though the majority of episodes are heavy on the funny, there are more than a few clunkers too, especially toward the end of the series.

As for the animation, it’s a mixed blessing.  Danger Mouse is hand animated and it’s pretty cool stuff.  Some scenes incorporate photographic cut-outs a la Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python work.  The motion is sometimes jerky, but it’s never distracting.  However, the transfer on this release is horrendous.

Presentation
I’m not sure how the originals looked on TV, but there is a heavily grainy quality to the Danger Mouse episodes on these DVDs.  I had written it off as a byproduct of the hand drawn animation until I watched the Count Duckula bonus feature, which was crystal clear.  The sound is nothing to rave about either.  It’s there.  You can hear it.  That’s all.

Extras
If extras were food, this would be the equivalent of Chinese take-out.  It looks like a lot, but you’ll be hungry fifteen minutes later. 

First up, there is a bonus episode of Count Duckula.  This episode looks much better than the Danger Mouse episodes and it does contain my favorite joke of the entire set (a joke about the Transylvanian Clamp), but the writing is mostly sub par.

After that is something called Alternative Theme Song Options.  This contains four instrumentals that were initially pitched for consideration as the basis for the theme song, but were used for background music instead.  It’s worthless.  Consider that the actual theme song, as bad as it is (and it’s really, really bad), is better than these, and you’ll soon see that music was not the series’ strong suit.

Then there’s Danger Mouse Theme Song Karaoke.  Yep, it’s the karaoke version of the theme song.  It lasts all of twenty seconds.

Finally, there are Character
Descriptions, which are just that.  If you take out the Count Duckula episode, you have approximately five minutes worth of extras. 

The Bottom Line
"He’s the greatest / He’s fantastic / Wherever there is danger he’ll be there."

Good God above, I’ve got that song stuck in my head!!!  I give Danger Mouse – The Final Seasons a solid three pants for content.  The lack of noteworthy extras and the poor transfer hold it back from a four.  Still, in a world of crappy Saturday morning cartoons, you could do much worse than getting this set for your kids or for yourself.