A&E completes their run of Danger Mouse complete season releases with this three disc set which compiles all of the episodes from seasons seven, eight, nine and ten in addition to a few fun supplements. But who, or what, is Danger Mouse?

The series aired on television in the United Kingdom and then later in the United States during the early 1980s and it was, at its core, a fun parody of the 'super spy' concept best embodied by the likes of the James Bond movies and the famous Danger Man television series, with a little bit of Danger Diabolik thrown in just for fun. All of this was done with tongue placed very firmly in cheek, which only makes sense considering that the secret agent in question happens to be an eye-patch wearing mouse and his sidekick a bumbling hamster named Penfold. Together, the chief would send them off on missions wherein they'd, more often than not, have to take down Baron Greenbacks, a sinister toad with meglomaniacal ambitions or other assorted villains.

The humor was a nice mix of site gags and clever dialogue, all done with a wink to the camera and a few knowing nods to the fact that yes, this is a cartoon (in the first episode in the set, The Orient Express, the running joke is that they characters should 'have read the script!). The jokes, many of which are bad puns or word play based, come very quickly and it's a testament to the writers that they were able to pack so much into the dialogue for the show. When Danger Mouse, Penfold or their foes weren't delivering witty lines, the stoic narrator would pick up the slack.

As clever as the animation was, however, the animation was pretty poor. Visions of Bakshi's old Spider-Man cartoon will no doubt crop up when viewers notice how much of the animation is repeated and recycled throughout the series and how minimal the movements and speaking scenes are when compared to other cartoons of the same era. This, combined with the fact that during these later years it seemed that the writers were running out of ideas, keeps these later episodes from hitting truly great status.

Even with a lot of things having already been played out, however, there's still plenty of fun to be had with this material. Stand out moments include the reappearance of Count Duckula, this time with Frankenstoat in tow, and Danger Mouse and Penfold's 'vacation' to Venice where they find Greenbacks wanting to pave it all over in order to build more shopping centers. Cor! What A Picture! is a perfect example of how good the self referential humor could be in the series and Penfold Transformed gives the dim-witted hamster his time in the spotlight. There are plenty of fun pop culture references scattered throughout the selection of cartoons provided here which means that both young kids and adults should be able to enjoy the series much the same way that they were able to enjoy The Flintstones or Spongebob Squarepants to name two other series that appeal to viewers of all age groups.

The episodes contained in the three disc set are as follows:

Disc One:
Danger Mouse On The Orient Express
The Ultra Secret Secret
Duckula Meets Frankenstoat
Where There's A Well There's A Way
All Fall Down
Turn Of The Tide
Gremlin Alert
Cor! What A Picture!

Disc Two:
I Spy With My Little Eye
Bigfoot Falls
The Statue Of Liberty Caper
Penfold Transformed
A Dune With A View
Don Coyote And Sancho Penfold

Disc Three:
Crumhorn Strikes Back
Ants, Trees And Whoops-A-Daisy
There's A Penfold In My Suit
Rhyme And Punishment
Pillow Fight!
Heavy Duty
The Intergalactic 147

Video:

The picture quality on the 1.33.1 fullframe transfers that the episodes in this set receive are decent but not perfect. There's a fair bit of grain present from time to time and there are scenes where the colors look a little bit on the flat side. The good news is that there are no problems with the encoding in that the episodes are pretty much devoid of edge enhancement or mpeg compression and show only slight traces of aliasing. No motion blurring issues crop up and there's a fairly good level of detail present throughout. Things could have been cleaned up a little more than they have been but what A&E gives us here doesn't look bad.