Danger 5

Produced by Dinosaur and broadcast on Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Danger 5 is an exhilarating, off-beat television series that can best be described as a glorious and surreal patchwork of genres and styles. It’s a glorious homage to the pulp literature, comic books, and low-budget action movies of the mid 20th century. Airing from 2011 to 2015, this extraordinary series is a brilliant amalgamation of action, satire, retro aesthetics, bizarre humor, and delightful absurdity.

The primary action of Danger 5 centers around a group of five international spies, whose mission is the assassination of Adolf Hitler during World War II. This eponymous team includes an American leader, an Australian communication specialist, a Russian soldier, a British Royal Air Force pilot, and a French seductress. Each member exhibits stereotyped national characteristics, a deliberate move designed to humorously highlight, and expose the clichés of war film character tropes.

The series faithfully replicates a 1960s view of the world, a time when high adventure, bravery, and daring were the touchstones of heroism. It presents a hilariously distorted version of the world, where World War II is a stage for bizarre happenings: anthropomorphic animals, dinosaurs, Nazi robots, Japanese soldiers armed with syringes filled with dinosaur serum, and more. This distorted reimagining of World War II amplifies the narrative’s inherent absurdity, pushing it into the realms of the surreal.

Danger 5’s visual style imitates the low-budget feel of the old 1960s spy and adventure shows, complete with intentionally poor special effects and '60s-era design motifs. The show also employs a distinctive audio style, with overdubbed dialogue that brings to mind badly-translated foreign films, further enhancing its nostalgic feel.

Danger 5 remarkably blends surreal humor, action, and over-the-top plots within each of its episodes, elegantly threading farcical narratives with the ongoing mission to kill Hitler. This narrative structure allows a parody of a multitude of genres including spy-action thrillers, war films, science fiction and fantasy, and more. The creators, Dario Russo, and David Ashby have managed to engineer an exquisitely eccentric homage to classic 1960s television while slyly deconstructing and satirizing the ruling conventions of those genres.

The series was reimagined for its second season, shifting gears from the 1960s aesthetic to a more 1980s setting. This brought about an injection of '80s film and pop culture tropes and references, breathing fresh life into the series while maintaining its core charm.

Despite its outlandish premise, Danger 5 exhibits a keen sense of narrative coherence with storylines that are as engrossing as they are ridiculous. This meticulous attention to storytelling in combination with the beautifully crafted world contributes to Danger 5’s overall success and appeal.

Each episode ends with a cocktail recipe, advised by the team's lead, Colonel Chestbridge, making for an amusingly quirky sign-off. These cocktail recipes, unconventional as they are, offer a wonderfully absurd lens into the bizarre sensibilities of the series.

Danger 5 won the hearts of audiences worldwide with its distinctive brand of humor and a morbid fascination with World War II tropes. It’s a series that revels in its absurdity, showcases a knack for cultural and genre satire, and provides a humorously exaggerated retelling of the world's most infamous conflict. With its bold twist on genre conventions and its infectiously joyous take on adventure narratives, Danger 5 has left an indelible mark on contemporary television, carving out its own unique space in the process.

In summary, Danger 5 is an innovative, remarkably bold series that melds familiar war and spy narratives with a distinctly comedic and surreal lens. With its retro style, idiosyncratic humor, and discerning sense of self-awareness, Danger 5 is an unforgettable exploration into the strange and the absurd, a diamond in the rough of modern television programming that's worth a watch for its sheer audacity and off-kilter charm.