Monday, 5 June 2023

A Short Post On the 1990s Dennis the Menace TV Series


In 1996, having been appearing in the Beano since 1951, Dennis the Menace and his faithful Abyssinian wire-haired tripe-hound Gnasher made the transfer to television for a series called Dennis the Menace, which ran on Tuesday and Friday afternoons on CBBC for two series until 1998, then managed to survive in repeats until the start of 2009, when it was supplanted by a rebooted version. And yes, over here it was called Dennis the Menace, at least at first.

There was a version of the show retitled Dennis and Gnasher, but that was solely for the United States, to avoid confusion with their own Dennis (who infamously happened to make his debut on the exact same day as the British Menace). The belief that it was always called Dennis and Gnasher probably arises because later Region 2 DVD releases used the ...and Gnasher versions; perhaps this was so they could also be released in Region 1 with minimum fuss, or perhaps because by this point the 2009 reboot, which was always called Dennis and Gnasher, was a thing and they wanted to be able to advertise both series under one banner (by this point the comic strip itself had also been retitled, perhaps to avoid the negative connotations of the word 'Menace').

1 comment:

  1. Of course, this went the other way too. Channel 4 picked up the DiC produced Dennis the Menace cartoon (the US one) as part of their children's strand back in the day. To avoid the confusion, they used an instrumental of the theme tune, and had a suitably Boss Cat-like end caption simply titling the show "Dennis" and leaving it at that. Sources suggest that this made it to DVD in the UK, and that there was some attempt to release the live action film, again just as "Dennis".

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