Victor & Hugo: Bunglers in Crime
Victor & Hugo: Bunglers in Crime is a British crime comedy animated series made by Cosgrove Hall Productions for Thames Television and broadcast on Children's ITV from 6 September 1991 to 29 December 1992. Its eponymous characters were based on the villains Gaston and Pierre from the 1988–1993 series Count Duckula.
Victor & Hugo was Cosgrove Hall's second cel-animated production to be assisted by the Spanish animation studio Alfonso Productions, as well as their last cel-animated project before the collapse of Thames Television. However, it was later repeated on television in Germany as well as Cyprus, Gibraltar, Bosnia, Belize and the Falkland Islands on the military television network BFBS.
Unlike most other Thames Television-era Cosgrove Hall series, Victor & Hugo was never released on DVD.
It was also the last Cosgrove Hall show to feature the voices of Brian Trueman and David Jason, and featured guest appearances from many of the company's earlier characters, including Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, Soames and Potson, and even Damson Bunhandler.
History
Victor and Hugo were based on the two five-time villains of Gaston and Pierre from Count Duckula; while Gaston was a tall, thin black stork, and Pierre a stubby, short parakeet, both Victor and Hugo were humans, but they lived in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals. Many of the actions and phrases first used for Gaston and Pierre were reused for Victor and Hugo, such as Gaston shoving Pierre's beret in his mouth to keep him quiet, "Why is it that it is?", "Yes, but mainly no!", and "It is your fault, it is all your fault, it is always your fault!".
Additional characters were created specifically for this show; the character of Wyatt Eartle in the fourth episode "Cowboys and Indiscipline" is also a parody of Wyatt Earp while the character of Achilles Marrot in the thirteenth episode "Blunder on the Orient Express" is a parody of Hercule Poirot.
Premise
The series centred on the exploits of two bumbling French criminal brothers, who were the eponymous Victor and Hugo; despite referencing the French author Victor Hugo in their names, both brothers were not particularly intelligent.
The plot of every episode focused on Victor, Hugo, Interpol, and their English-based business "Naughtiness International" getting hired by criminal figures to steal something - and Victor would come up with a "meticulous plan" to achieve this goal, which was routinely botched by Hugo. Most episodes usually ended with the brothers imprisoned.
Main characters
Victor
The taller of the brothers, Victor was also clearly the leader for Naughtiness International; his two most striking characteristics were his fedora hat and his manicured moustache. He also wore a pair of white gloves, which had been given to him for his birthday by Interpol - and his English was significantly better than Hugo's, although he was continuously at risk of making spoonerisms. Despite his constant raging at Hugo, Victor did show on multiple occasions that he secretly cared deeply about his brother ; he was voiced by Jimmy Hibbert.
Hugo
Victor's younger brother, Hugo always wore a beret and actually looked like a burglar, right down to his ever-present eye-mask; he was always subservient to "My Victor" and was often the butt of slapstick comedy. While his intelligence were notably inferior to those of Victor, Hugo was often able to make sense of his brother's spoonerisms - and he would often describe their chosen profession as "criminiminals". Despite the notable handicap of a lack of ability, he also always had the job of driving the van; Hugo's voice, like that of Pierre from Count Duckula, bore a striking resemblance to that used by Peter Sellers for the Goon Show character Bluebottle, and the two characters often made similar exclamations. He was voiced by David Jason.
Interpol the Parrot
A cynical East End Multicolour, Interpol lived in Victor and Hugo's van, and provided a voice of reason in rapid-fire Cockney English; it is not saying very much to comment that Interpol was by far the most intelligent member of the group. Aside from residing in the van constantly, Interpol was also able to function as a telephone - he would ring when sat on his perch, and his beak was put to the person's ear. Victor also used him to dial out by pressing his talons like a keypad; in one episode, Hugo used him as a makeshift pair of scissors. He was also voiced by David Jason, but had no dialogue for the episode "Treasure Haunt".
The Wretched Dog
A small dog played a very important role in most episodes; at various points, often when the plot appeared to be flagging, the dog would run up one of Victor's trouser legs, remove his boxer shorts and run off with them down his other leg. This running gag also appeared at the end of most episodes - and Hugo particularly enjoyed the dog's appearances, often muttering "good doggie!". In production material from the now-demolished Cosgrove Hall studio, the dog's name is given as Baskerville, although, he was never referred to as such on screen; one episode that he is known never to appear in is the eighth one, "The Case of the Vose Vase", but he also does not appear in the eleventh episode, "Escort Red-Handed".
Monsieur Meccaneaux
Despite his French name, M. Meccaneaux was a working-class accented English rat who was frequently called by the brothers to repair the van, and on occasion, to provide other forms of technical expertise such as the construction of the Concrete Destruction Ray ; he was also voiced by David Jason.
Episode list
Series 1 (1991)
All thirteen of the first series' episodes were screened on ITV as part of the Children's ITV strand on Fridays at 4:05pm; however, on 4 and 11 October 1991, the Children's ITV strand started at the later time of 4:35pm as a result of ITV's rugby coverage on those two days and Anglia Television's Knightmare, which was into its fifth series by this time, was the first programme of the day, so the fifth episode "Hyp-Not-Isn't" was not seen until 18 October.
The first fifteen episodes of the second series were, for a second time, screened on ITV on Fridays as part of the Children's ITV strand at 4:05pm; however, the sixteenth and penultimate one was screened six days after the fifteenth one on Christmas Eve 1992, and the seventeenth and final one was screened five days later on Thames' final ever Tuesday.
Apart from Thames Video's VHS release of the first, fifth and sixth episodes, this show spawned a series of six tie-in books by Jimmy Hibbert, Robin Kingsland and Rod Green, published by HarperCollins Publishers and Boxtree; they featured Cosgrove Hall's short-lived triangular logo on their front covers, and entitled "Fu Man's Choo Choo", "The Big Nap", "Out to Lunch", "The Great Golden Turnip Caper", "The Great Train Robbery", and "Where Beagles Dare". The two HarperCollins-published hardback books by Hibbert were also released as audio cassettes, read by Hibbert himself as narrator and Victor - but Peter Sallis filled in for David Jason as Hugo and Interpol on these cassettes.