Donkey Kong Planet

The French logo of Donkey Kong Planet

Donkey Kong Planet (known in French as La planète de Donkey Kong, and later renamed DKTV and DKTV.cool) is a programing block that aired from September 4 1996 to September 1st 2001 on France 2, reusing various assets from the Donkey Kong Country animated series. It was produced and animated by Medialab.

Unlike what is claimed by various publications, La planète de Donkey Kong is not the French name of the Donkey Kong Country cartoon (which simply had the same name in French), but rather a separate show which aired exclusively in France.

Format and cast

Using a format similar to The Bozo Show and King Koopa's Kool Kartoons, Donkey Kong Planet consisted of airings of various animated series and children's live-action shows interspersed with original material featuring part of the Donkey Kong Country series cast. The original content ranged from comedic skits to musical numbers and parodies of current movies and TV shows. Although ostensibly aimed toward children, Donkey Kong Planet leaned toward referential and post-modern humour.

Donkey Kong Planet used the same motion capture style of animation as Donkey Kong Country, but had the characters superimposed over a live-action set and frequently interacting with real actors.

The interstial segments featured Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Candy Kong and Funky Kong, who were sometimes duplicated to fill crowd shots. Other animated characters included generic Kremlings (using an edit of Krusha's model). Although produced by the same company and reusing the models from the first season of Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Planet's voice cast was completely different from the French dub of Donkey Kong Country.

Shows aired as a part of Donkey Kong Planet

• The Addams Family
• The Adventures of Sinbad
• Arthur
• The Adventures of Hyperman
• The Animals of Farthing Wood
• Baby Folies
• Back to Sherwood
• The Baskervilles
• Beetlejuice
• Belphégor
• Big Wolf on Campus
• Breaker High
• Caitlin's Way
• Capitaine Fracasse
• City Hunter
• Clueless
• Cyrano 2022
• Dodo, le retour
• Donkey Kong Country
• Les Enfants de Toromiro
• Even Stevens
• Extreme Ghostbusters
• Family Dog
• Free Willy
• Full House
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
• Goosebumps
• Grand-mère est une sorcière
• Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left
• Ivanhoe the King's Knight
• Iznogoud
• The Journey of Allen Strange
• Les Jules, chienne de vie...
• Jumanji
• Kassai and Luk
• Kenan & Kel
• Lupo Alberto
• Manu
• Max Steel
• Miami 7
• Les milles et une nuits
• The Mozart Band
• Mummy Nanny
• The Mysterious Cities of Gold
• Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog
• Les Multoches
• Normand Normal
• Nos plus belles vacances
• Ocean Girl
• Odd Man Out
• Once Upon a Time...
• Parker Lewis Can't Lose
• Princess of the Nile
• Princesse Sheherazade
• ReBoot
• Robinson Sucroe
• Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
• Saved by the Bell
• The Secret World of Alex Mack
• Sky Trackers
• Sky Dancers
• Simba: The King Lion
• Sister, Sister
• Spellbinder
• The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper
• Student Bodies
• Sweet Valley High
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Thunderstone
• Toy Story 2
• The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat
• Weird Science
• X-Men
• Young Hercules

Gallery

• 

  Commercial for Donkey Kong Land 2.

• 

  Title card of "Caspied le gentil fantôme".

• 

  Drunk Donkey Kong in "Caspied le gentil fantôme".

• 

  Title card of "Le comte de Monte Costaud".

• 

  Donkey Kong punching Funky Kong in "Le comte de Monte Costaud".

• 

  Title card of "La nuit des vivants-morts".

• 

  Donkey Kong as a math teacher in "La nuit des vivants-morts".

• 

  Title card of "Bouffy contre les vampires".

• 

  Funky Kong in a fit of road rage in "Obel Corsica".

• 

  Title card of "Fréquence Kong".

Reception

DKTV won a 1999 7 d'Or for excellence in children programming, as decided by a public vote.

External links

• Compilation of various skits from the show
• Entry on Planète Jeunesse