Danger Mouse

‘He’s the greatest. He’s fantastic. Wherever there is danger he’ll be there!’

The 1981 television series, Danger Mouse, featured the animated antics of an unlikely secret agent and his trusty hamster sidekick. Created by Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, it was a parody of British spy novels and starred a rodent James Bond-type hero, who survived all kinds of dangerous missions in his fight against evil.

The series was based on Danger Man, a 1960s secret agent drama starring Patrick McGoohan as an 007-type spy, John Drake. In a voice-over, Drake tells viewers, "A messy job? Well, that's when they usually call on me."

Danger Mouse is the mouse equivalent of John Drake. He is a hero who speaks 34 different languages and is called the "world's greatest secret agent". He's assisted by Penfold, a timid hamster, who wears a crumpled suit and thick spectacles. Penfold's nickname is The Jigsaw, due to the fact he goes to pieces in a crisis!

Series development

Initially, the writers intended Danger Mouse to be slightly more serious - or as serious as one can be when writing about a mouse superspy! However, they decided to make the series very silly instead.

This was on the advice of singer and comedian Mike Harding, who pointed out that when you have a mouse secret agent, the world's your oyster and you don't need to do James Bond-type things rooted in reality.

Cosgrove and Hall agreed and created a winning formula, as viewing figures hit a new high in 1983, when 21 million people regularly tuned in to watch the show. Its familiar theme song paved the way for a whole array of crazy antics.

Danger Mouse (voiced by David Jason) and Penfold (voiced by Terry Scott) have all sorts of adventures as they battle the bad guys and save the world from disaster, time and time again.



Plot

Each episode was a self-contained plot, when Danger Mouse and Penfold would fend off another disaster for the human race. In the first episode, our hero has to destroy an army of attack robots, who have been deployed by a foreign super-power to go after secret agents, including Danger Mouse's counterparts.

In another episode, the recurring villain, Baron Silas Greenback (voiced by Edward Kelsey), steals some growth serum and creates giant chickens to aid his bid for world domination.

The evil Greenback returns in another episode to create a means of making the world's leaders laugh themselves to death, so that he can become ruler of the whole planet. The mad genius then finds a way of stopping the earth's rotation and cancelling gravity. How can Danger Mouse thwart his dastardly plan this time?

One of the most bizarre plots occurs when Penfold has a fall and in his befuddled state, he believes he's king of the jungle. However, of more pressing concern is a mystery plot to turn all the world's elephants into sugar cubes.

Critical acclaim

Children and the critics loved Danger Mouse and it continued for 12 years, until the final episode of the original series was aired in March 1992 on ITV. The show came third in the top 100 greatest kids' TV shows of all time, as compiled by Channel 4.

It spawned a huge range of merchandise, such as video games, books, jigsaw puzzles, annuals, sticker albums, videos, mugs, T-shirts, keyrings, posters and fridge magnets. These were aimed at the adults who had grown up with Danger Mouse, as well as at children.

Repeats of the show were still being shown in 2010, and a mobile game was published by ZED Worldwide, the Danger Mouse Quiz. This was followed by a second mobile game, Danger Mouse, in 2011.

New series

A new series of Danger Mouse for a new generation of children was released in September 2015 on the CBBC network. Dave Lamb is the narrator of the series, which continues to follow the adventures of the rodent secret agent and his trusty hamster sidekick.

Danger Mouse is voiced by Alexander Armstrong and Kevin Eldon is the voice of Penfold. The fearless crime-fighting duo use the latest gadgets to protect civilisation from the evil Baron Greenback.

Working from a secret location in London, underneath a post box, the duo are dispatched by the head of the British Secret Service on a series of dangerous missions.

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