Road Rovers was quite nearly a classic show, and was showing potential of going up a gear or two when it was cancelled at the end of one season. The show was made by Warner in 1996 at the tail-end of their 1990's renaissaince. It doesn't have the trailblazing qualities of 'Animaniacs', but most of the voice talent and a lot of the writing talent here is from that show. Road Rovers also departs from the usual Warner formula in being a half hour action-comedy rather than a collection of comedy shorts. It still has a good share of puns and in-jokes, but they don't swarm over the script like they did in most of Warner's earlier 90's shows. It might have been better if they did, because the weakest point of 'Road Rovers' is the action plots, which tend to be pretty ridicuous and often not very well explained. OTOH the banter between the characters is great. In fact Road Rovers is definately a character-driven show, despite its action-adventure genre.
A moment to explain the background. It's actually fairly complicated, and not really explained very well in the early episodes. A scientist named Shepherd develops a 'cano-mutator' which turns dogs (and as it turns out, anything else) into intelligent, humanoid, speaking beings. The bad guy, General Parvo, gets his hands on one, destroys Shepherd's lab, and sets off on his meglomaniac schemes, using the device to enlarge insects, cats and lord knows what. Shepherd meanwhle rebuilds his facility underground, and selects 5 dogs from various countries to become transformed into the Road Rovers and fight for the good of humanity, etc. Somehow they are placed as the pets of world leaders, and spend their off-time as quadrupeds. Now, this involves time-travel, and a lot of it isn't explained properly until the second last episode, which makes you suspect that Tom Ruegger was expecting another season at least. Whatever the case, the last two episodes are definately the strongest, and the last one, 'A Day in the Life' even manages to be genuinely poignant, is very inventive as well, and would warrant 4 stars by itself.
Anyway, the characters. Hunter is a golden retriever (I think) who was originally a stray. He's the leader if the group and has a cheerful, witty and charismatic personality, though he's also capable of being rather obtuse at times. e.g.
Colleen: We've got two options. Go with your plan, or one that will actually work.
Hunter: Hmmmm.. yeah, tough choice.
Colleen is probably the strongest and most original character here, and is very endearing. A collie in her quadruped form, she has a British accent and vocal mannerisms (her accent does sound a bit Australian at times, but never mind), is a martial arts expert, and though she is completely unflappable, has a habit of saying or doing really odd things at times, like spinning around on one foot and making a silly face, during a life and death aerial battle, or suddenly calling Hunter "Huntsie-wuntsie" in the middle of a similar situation in a car chase. This is probably an improvement over what she calls Blitz, the very vain Doberman. Generally she pretends not to be able to even remember who he is, or if she does call him something it'll be something like "Mr Chubby-cheeks"
Blitz has an obsession with 'biting tooshies', though the only person we ever see him actually do this to is the German Chancellor. In any case, this leads Exile, the Russian Husky, to refer to him as "weird boy" frequently. All of the characters are voiced wonderfully, though Blitz might bring back nightmares of Yak from Balto II (same actor. Similar voice, but completely inappropriate in Balto.) In 'Road Rovers' he sounds much like Arnold Schwar... hell, I can never spell that. You know who I mean. He 'runs' California at the moment.
Rounding out the team are Shag, a sheepdog from Switzerland who for some reason doesn't atually speak or wear the road Rovers armour when he tranforms - he just gets bigger, and Muzzle, a Rotweiller who isn't transformed at all, and spends most of the time in a straightjacket because he was sent mad by an incident which isn't revealed until episode 12, from memory. He is set loose from time to time to do things like destroy armoured vehicles.
Generaly I'd say 'Road Rovers' is pitched at a younger audience than Animaniacs, but there is still quite a bit of adult humour here. Tom Reugger did devise the series, and writes or co-writes about half the episodes - which tend to be the better ones. Some of these were obvously considered a bit too much and were cut out in the Cartoon Network re-runs. The infamous 'son-of-ovich' song is missing from the last episode for instance. Charles and Diana have been removed completely from episode three as well. But other lines sneaked through. Like this exchange as they're staking out a building.
Hunter: Exile, you and Blitz go around and check out the rear entrance.
Blitz: Excellant. I bite anything that comes out of the rear.
Exile: Sigmund Freud would have field day with nut-boy like you.
I also liked the maniac who is trying to destroy the United States, it turns out, because he's mad at the NFL for letting the Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore. Bill Clinton gets in a remark about Whitewater, and the Russian President makes a quip about Bosnia. There's also a scene where Clinton wanders about calling for Hilary, and then says "Oh, she's not here". This was about 6 months before the Lewinsky thing, so I don't quite get that, but I suspect it was topical at the time.
And Colleen likes "squeaky-toys shaped like bananas"? Ok... I'm sure that's a completely innocent line.
Anyway, it's a shame this one was cancelled. The characters really do grow on you, and if a bit more care had been taken in explaining the back story early on, and the thing had been allowed to go into a second season, I think it could have been a real favourite. As it is, it's going to be pot-luck if it ever screens again. It's probably showing at the moment on Cartoon Network in Argentina.
/ 4 reviews)
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