Saturday, April 12, 2014

French Premiere of the New Gadget Series Planned For November 2014 on Boomerang

I recently came across this March 20 29 press release from Turner Kids, via the site ComicSystems.fr, detailing the new shows slated to air this year on Turner's various kids channels in France - in other words, Boomerang, Boing and Cartoon Network. It can also be seen as a PDF via Boomerang-academy.fr. At the end of the section for the Boomerang channel, the press release says this:

Inspecteur Gadget 
A la fin de l’année Boomerang comptera un nouvel arrivant dans son casting de stars, Inspecteur Gadget ! La série arrivera, en exclusivité sur l’antenne, avec une toute nouvelle production. Il sera au rendez-vous avec ses nombreux Gadgets, bien sûr, et les personnages mythique de la série.  
26 épisodes de 22 minutes
Inédit TV

Which, when run through Google Translate, comes out something like this:

Inspector Gadget 
At the end of the year, Boomerang will have a newcomer in its star cast, Inspector Gadget! The series comes exclusively to the channel with a brand new production. It will be waiting for you with its many gadgets, of course, and the legendary characters of the series.

26 episodes á 22 minutes
Unreleased TV

Apparently, this has been known for some time before Turner's press release. A Toonzone forum comment, written as early as February 4 in a Cartoon Network news thread, says, "Also, MR. BEAN and INSPECTOR GADGET at BOOMERANG EUROPE in 2014!" (A new season of the animated Mr. Bean was one of Turner's other announcements in the press release.)

Anyhow... while the press release itself is no more specific about the premiere than "the end of the year", a slideshow gallery near the bottom of the ComicSystem post features the below image and the caption, "En novembre sur Boomerang" (In November on Boomerang). This is actually the most specific timeframe I've seen for a premiere date so far. (By the way, I have no idea why a silhouette image is being used here, as this is merely a silhouette of the Gadget copter picture released by Teletoon last June. I guess someone thought they were being coy.)


One thing I really like: this Boomerang press release is the second time I see 22 minutes officially stated as the episodes' runtime! The first time, of course, was in DHX's distribution catalogue from January. Speaking of which: DHX recently released a slightly updated version of this distribution catalogue, back on March 17. It has pretty much exactly the same information about the reboot series (see page 33, or double-page 17), with one nuance difference in that the description now says "26 x 22 min" rather than just "26 x 22' ". Yeah, a small difference if there ever was one, but I like seeing that the 22 minutes information has been kept:



However -- in contrast to Turner's press release, DHX's March 17 catalogue states once more (on page 10, or double-spread 6): "New series to premiere in 2015!" So the two official sources are slightly contradicting each other about the premiere time. Then again, it might very well be that DHX's catalogue refers to the planned Canadian premiere on Teletoon. It has happened before that a show gets its world premiere in a different country than the one where it was commissioned and produced (just recently with The Tom and Jerry Show, which premiered on Teletoon Canada before it did so on Cartoon Network); and considering Gadget's evergreen popularity in France, I had half-way expected some broadcaster there to snatch up the new series as soon as it became available. If these proceedings go as scheduled, perhaps the world premiere of the reboot series will end up being on Boomerang France.

2 comments:

  1. That looks pretty neat! I wouldn't be surprised if in America, Cartoon Network picked up the show, as they do also have "Johnny Test," and THAT'S a DHX property, and I remember them showing a few other Canadian imports (like "Totally Spies," the "Total Drama" franchise and the 2007 "George of the Jungle" remake.) Maybe this would also result in the American Boomerang rerunning the original series (I know Boomerang is planning to do a rebrand to what sounds like a Hub-style channel, so the show wouldn't be too out of place there.)

    I am also hoping this show will still be in tune to the original series. So far, the closest they've got in revivals was the "Inspector Gadget's Biggest Caper Ever" CGI film.

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    1. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see how the distribution pans out. I'm not sure I can even hope the new series will end up on any channel over here in Norway... but who knows...

      I both agree and disagree with you about the "Biggest Caper Ever" film... though I mostly have to disagree. I guess, looking purely on the surface, you could say it comes closer to the 1983 series than other modern-day reboots simply because Inspector Gadget is wearing his classic trenchcoat, and Brain and Penny are actually part of the storyline. Still, the film also has (in my opinion) bad writing, bad direction, lackluster music, ugly character designs and rather terrible CGI animation. M.A.D. Cat's design is off; Penny is nothing like she was in the original show, appearance- OR personality-wise; and Dr Claw acts out of character - for example, at the point where he tells Gadget all about his evil plan, he apparently has no problems with Gadget SEEING him the entire time; a direct contradiction to how the character was established in the TV series.

      In short: the surface of the original series may be present (to an extent) in "Biggest Caper Ever"... but in my eyes, the style and tone of the series just isn't there. Perhaps difference number one in my book is that the film is terrible, while the original series is great. The direct-to-video producers didn't really capture that part. ;) I actually think the Gadgetinis series, at its best, comes a little closer at capturing the tone and feel of the original series... though I'm not a big fan of that reboot either.

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