DangerMouse is 25 years old this year. And what are they going to do about it? Cosgrove-Hall and Fremantle Media are swamping the market with DVDs celebrating the fact. There are 7 DVDs out there with up to 9 episodes on each or you can go for the jugular and invest in the Anniversary Box set that proudly announces all 161 episodes ever made on 12 DVDs plus some extras. I will come back to that claim again a little later.

DANGERMOUSE

A number of other villains make it into the episodes but they often play a very minor role and only appear on the odd occasion. They include Count Duckula, Mac The Fork or Dudley Poison. There's also a selection of aliens visiting Earth on occasions.

Of course, Terry Scott as Ernest Penfold is the perfect counterbalance to David Jason's DangerMouse. His voice has just the right amount of despair and mania to make him both extremely likeable and cute. I can't imagine anyone else doing the voice and must admit that Penfold is my favourite character of them all.

You will not experience the vivid colours you might know from Disney animations. This is home grown, UK original animation and therefore might not look as sparkly as the American counterparts, but it certainly has its own charm.

SCRIPTS:

I always loved the idea that DangerMouse and his fellow characters knew they were in a show. I wonder when they were 'becoming aware' that they could interact with the narrator, hear him, find themselves stopped in the middle of a sentence because the narrator is going off on another rant which he frequently does - so much so that at some point the villainous character of Dr Crumhorn sits at his desk drumming his fingers while the narrator goes on and on and on. Discussions about the merits of a decent script and whether or not DangerMouse should have read it or not are heard in some episodes as well as the mention that they were not doing any more takes as Penfold had already done it 14 times and still messed it up.

The only way they can come up to that amount is if they used to have little short 5 minute episodes they counted as individual but that were later combined to make a longer episode. I reckon there are a number of the longer - 30 minutes - episodes that were made up of a number of shorter ones. You notice gaps in some episodes, namely 'All Fall Down' where the screen goes black for a split second before the next chapter starts.

I personally would have preferred the episodes in broadcast order to see how, over years, the show changed, if at all. But this is not the case. It appears all they have done is taken the individual DVDs you have been able to buy while and released them in a 12 DVD 25th Anniversary Box Set. It's great to have all the episodes together and at a bargain price,

Pictures of Dangermouse Collection (DVD)

DangerMouse Cast - Main Characters

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

RRP for the DVD box set is £49.99 but if you shop around you can get it cheaper. But even at full price it's a bit of a bargain, after all you get the full series on 12 DVDs for that price, just over £4.00 per DVD. I paid £28.99 with Amazon (free delivery) and was astonished that since its release it's been sold out for most of the time. Amazon turned out to be cheapest when I ordered and I only needed to wait just under a week for delivery. Curiously, the day after I completed my order they put up the price to £34.99. I am glad I ordered when I did.

Of course you cannot compare classic programmes like DangerMouse with the animated programmes you get nowadays on channels like Disney or Cartoon Network. But if you are of the generation that grew up with DangerMouse and liked it when it was out first time around then you might like this collection.