The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers is a 2D Flash animated television series created by Dan Chambers, Mark Huckerby, and Nick Ostler. Starting off as online shorts in 2002, it was eventually commissioned as a full series by CITV and Cartoon Network in the United Kingdom, S4C in Wales, YTV and VRAK.TV in Canada, and it is an international co-production between UK studio Pesky and Studio B Productions in Vancouver, British Columbia. 26 episodes were produced.^[1]

The show's directors Claire Underwood and Dan Chambers and producer David Hodgson picked up the British Academy Children's Award for Animation in 2006.^[2]

Overview

The show follows Xan, Enk, and Adi, a trio of travelling showmen called the Adrenalini brothers who are hailing from the mysterious land of Réndøosîa (a fictional Eastern European country that experiences an unusually high rate of natural disasters to the point that its flag is always depicted with a hole in it, as well as being at war with the neighboring nation of Grimzimistan). The Adrenalinis tour around the world staging ridiculously hazardous stunts, usually succeeding (but more out of luck than skill). In their travels, they have visited many real countries and places in the world, and even many periods in history (and, in some cases, fiction).

Cast and characters

• Dan Chambers as Xan, the oldest of the brothers. He acts as their leader who is constantly trying (and often failing) to keep the other two out of mischief. Both Xan and Enk are a pair of the showmen.
• Mark Huckerby as Enk, the youngest and the tiniest of the Adrenalini brothers. He is a small, sausage-shaped fellow with long, black whiskers and two tiny limbs.
• Nick Ostler as Adi, the largest and strongest of the brothers, He is more or less an overgrown child and he has a very mischievous streak to him. He wore blue overalls.

History

The series had its origins as a British student revue act in the 1990s, written and performed by The Pox, aka Dan Chambers, Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler.^[3] With ambitions to turn their live act into animation the trio presented their ideas to Pesky, who had just been approached by the BBC to develop a new Flash animation series for the relaunch of its CBBC website.

The original 10 two-and-a-half-minute 'shorts' were shown online, then on CBBC television in 2002 and the episode "Ocean of Terror" was awarded the Prix des Internautes at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival that summer, and went on in 2003 to win a People's Choice Award at Anima Mundi in Brazil.

By 2004 plans were hatched to create a longer-running television series based on the Adrenalini Brothers. And in 2005 the series of 78 seven-minute episodes went into production as a UK-Canadian co-production, with pre- and post-production by Pesky in their London studio, animation by Studio B in Vancouver, and scripting shared between writers on both sides of the Atlantic. The series first aired as part of Sunday Pants on Cartoon Network in the United States on 2 October 2005, and then it first aired as a full series in March 2006 on CITV in the UK, then YTV on 7 May 2006 (and later also VRAK.TV in Canada) followed by Cartoon Network across Europe and Asia. The series has enjoyed particular success in Australia where it was first aired by ABC Australia on 2 March 2006 in a regular early evening slot until 2010.

In 2006 the series began the year by picking up a Pulcinella Award at the Cartoons On The Bay festival in Italy and ended the year with the episode "Hunchback of Heartbreak" winning a BAFTA for Best Animation Series.

Broadcast

The show aired on YTV and VRAK.TV in Canada, Cartoon Network in the United States as part of Sunday Pants, and S4C in Wales. In the United Kingdom, the series aired on CITV and for a short time on Cartoon Network in 2007. Reruns were later shown on Boomerang from 2009 to 2011 and Pop from 2012 to 2015.

DVD releases

The series first came out in Australia, in a pair of separate volumes.^[4]

StudioCanal has released the entire series on DVD in the United Kingdom on 9 April 2012. The 3-disc set contains all 78 episodes from the TV series. In this release, the episodes, "Tails of Longing!" and "Dragon of Antagonism!" were edited to remove scenes considered dangerous imitable behaviour easily copied by children (specifically, Xan and Adi attempting to use a washing machine as a submersible in the former, and a glasses-less Xan catching a still-live firework before throwing it down in a panic after recognising it in the latter), these scenes are retained on the HuHa YouTube channel. The original online episodes are not included.

YouTube

The original web episodes were uploaded on the official Adrenalini channel on YouTube, with an episode from the TV series would be uploaded on Mondays.

From its launch in November 2012, the television series moved to an adult animation YouTube channel called "Huha",^[5] while an episode being uploaded every Friday until Huha ceased uploading in early 2014. A French and German version of the channel also includes episodes from the series.