Well this was a cute surprise. Regaling the adventures of duck, Bill (geddit?) this series has been produced in some very simple, yet mostly well modeled computer generated animation. Being aimed directly at kids, there are notable shortcuts taken with the animation and modeling, but these don’t really affect the story much, if at all.

Being Series Two (although the trailer later on tells us it’s Series Three) we already know the back story (or at least should do). It seems Ducktown (inhabited by ducks, of course... after all, you live in Humantown, don’t you?) was plagued by a duck-eating alligator. However, just before Bill was snapped up, he managed to talk the alligator – now known as Aldo – into friendship and the two have remained pals ever since. Plus, Aldo is now a welcome inhabitant of Ducktown, as he’s given up eating ducks for good nowadays. And why didn’t they just fly away, I hear you ask? Well, it seems none of the ducks in Ducktown can fly and must get around on motorised scooters, which makes for some funny moments.

Containing seven episodes of the hit series, this DVD also features a wide variety of extras to keep the young ’uns amused for a while. It’s good clean fun with some cool gross jokes that kids (and geeky animators) will enjoy and definitely get a laugh out of. Plus, of course, the usual morals about friendship and believing in yourself and not eating your friends.

Clocking in at a total of 1:14:48, each episode runs around ten and a half minutes and are named thus:

• Mind Over Mallard
• Got Milk?
• Duck Naked
• Bill Hatches an Egg
• Hey... Bill’s on the News!
• Denture Adventure
• Waddle’s Spud Bud

Well, visually the picture is quite close to perfect. Delivered in 4:3, the animation has been well laid-out to incorporate that format. Colours are magnificent without over or under saturation and some of the sets have been well modeled and realised (it’s the characters where the modelers have taken shortcuts mostly, although the ocean is fairly bereft as well).

Occasional graininess is apparent when a character is zoomed in on and freeze framed, rather than having the ‘camera’ continue rolling until the end of scene. As an example; Say a scene is 100 frames long. Most 3D animation would make the scene 100 frames long with a camera trucking the scene the whole time. Here, however, they’ve stilled (say) image 88 and kept it for the next 12 frames, so we don’t get any fresh feed info from a rolling ‘camera’ but a snapshot, essentially. (I use quotes on ‘camera’ because in most computer aided animation programs there is no real camera per se, but a virtual camera which brings us the image while moving like a camera through the 3D landscape).

Plenty of cool sounds are delivered through Dolby Digital stereo and include some ultra-lounge/jazzy/folky combos to pronounce the ‘duck’ feeling (to wit: plenty of deep horns ‘quacking’). Dialogue is all clear, although lip-synch is another place they’ve gone a little easier on the details. While still being okay, it’s just a little lazy, while the comedic sound effects are all fine and got a laugh more than once.

As far as extras go, there’s quite a parcel to enjoy. Firstly, there’s a bonus episode entitled The Fly Who Loved Me which adds excellent value for a start. Follow that with Character Line-Up, which is character biographies on six major dudes around Ducktown.

Next up is a DVD-ROM game that I didn’t play, but looks like fun. Entitled Hot Air Ballooning I’m assuming there’s a link there between the flying thing and balloons. Next up comes two test animations of 1:05 and 3:09 in 4:3. While under-rendered, they still look pretty good and quite bizarre when compared to the actual show. Then comes the trailer I mentioned above that says this is Episode Three. You be the judge...

Finally, there’s a music trailer which is actually just the opening titles without titles or dialogue. It runs in 1.78:1 without 16:9 enhancement.

So, overall, that’s a pretty good batch for the youngsters to keep busy with. This is a bright, fun show that the kids under 12 will enjoy and has equal appeal for both the sexes. Good fun stuff.

Quack on!