WARNING: This review contains spoilers.
It’s your allied super team from all corners of the globe – Danger 5 is back! This time, they’ve fly-kicked their way out of the swinging sixties and landed in the dripping excess of the eighties.
Just when you thought that dastardly Hitler was dead for good, the evil mastermind turns up in the most abominable of disguises – as a department store Santa Claus in London. Colonel Chestbridge is onto him, but tragically the Colonel gets caught in the crossfire and Hitler and his henchmen flee to Buenos Aires.
Danger 5 has disbanded. Tucker and Claire are getting married down under in a hazy, neon wedding to rival Scott and Charlene’s. Jackson is suffering from post-traumatic flashbacks of time spent as a prisoner in North Korea, numbing the pain with booze and women in a dodgy apartment in the States. Pierre is living it up in Tokyo, soloing on the sax at a swimsuit catwalk show, accompanied by his buddy Mackenzie, a coked-up white lion. And Ilsa? Well, we’ll get to her later.
Attacks are sent to the Danger 5 heroes, which leads them to reunite at a video store. They jet off to Buenos Aires, on the hunt for Carlos Mendes, in order to avenge Chestbridge’s death. Pierre and Jackson follow a lead to President Peron, which lands them into some hot water involving ants and a sleepy leopard. Soon enough though, they’re back partying with bathing babes and indulging in kiwi cocktails.
Meanwhile, Tucker and Claire are on the lookout for Mendes in the backstreets of Buenos Aires. Loved-up Tucker is a little more interested in activities for honeymooners and checking out tourist hotspots than hunting down criminals. A mysterious moustached-man in a Panama hat offers to be their local tour guide and Tucker is thrilled, but Claire is sceptical. The newlyweds agree to join the guide (conspicuously named Papa Hitler) for dinner on his luxury super-yacht.
Pierre and Jackson have managed to end up on the yacht as well, however they’ve been captured by Mendes. Ilsa, who has been working spy operations undercover as a dancer on the luxury super-yacht, releases her former Danger 5 comrades from the hands of Mendes.
The Danger 5 team reconvenes in the dining room, where Papa Hitler reveals his true identity and sprays machine gun fire at his rivals. Claire’s head is (shock, horror!) lopped off her shoulders by Mendes, falling into a devastated Tucker’s lap.
The four remaining heroes flee the yacht before it explodes when a bomb in the shape of a babushka doll (bombushka), planted by Ilsa, is set off. By Claire’s grave, Tucker swears to find and kill Hitler, no matter what it takes.
The next episode looks like it’s going to see the Danger 5 (now Danger 4) team heading to an American high school, 21 Jump Street style, to catch Hitler as he targets a student there.
The first Danger 5 episode back after a long hiatus was a touch frantic and crazy, but in the best possible way and it already has me hooked again. Eighties fashions and fads look great on the Danger 5 team, and it looks like the show will be extending their parodic reaches to other classic detective series. Especially with Shaun Micallef along for the ride, Danger 5 Season 2 is no doubt set to prove itself as Australian comedic gold.
Review Score: THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Danger 5 Screens on Sunday Nights at 9.30pm on SBS2. It’s also available through SBS OnDemand.
———-
