Being a child of the 1980's I was exposed to my fair share of really bad Saturday morning cartoon shows (here's looking at you Sectaurs and Inhumanoids) with most of them being based on whatever type of character the main toy companies of the time were attempting to launch. It was a youth where our biggest heroes were G.I. Joe and Transformers and they, unsurprisingly, were spun-off from toy lines themselves. Yeah, it wasn't the best decade for real quality animated shows, but I definitely can't remember anything quite as bad as The New Adventures Of Batman. Not by a long shot.

As created by Bob Kane in the late 1930's, Batman was a brooding character who fought crime years after his parents have been gunned down by a common mugger. It's a character who's been spun into many different angles over the years but the one thing that remains is that Batman (and his alter ego, millionaire Bruce Wayne) is not a happy camper.

But, seeing as this type of persona just wouldn't fly on network television, Batman took up a place as a do-gooder superhero with an acrobatic sidekick (the boy wonder, Robin) and appeared first in the campy 1960's live-action show before returning in the 70's as part of the Super Friends cartoon. Around the same time came the launch of the atrocity we're having a look at today. A show that, I'm pretty sure, even managed to insult it's youthful audience's intelligence back when it debuted in 1977.

There's absolutely nothing here to recommend. This is the type of show that's so ill conceived and unfaithful to its source that only the most hardcore of Batman fans should even bother with it. As created by Filmation (who would be most famous, in my eyes anyway, for producing He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe), The New Adventures Of Batman brings back Adam West and Burt Ward to voice our title heroes and even brings a good stable of villains from the comic book for good measure. But where the show goes horribly wrong is that Filmation were purposely aiming the show at the "under 12" demographic and they make it blatantly clear they were.

This is the kind of show you'd get if you mixed our caped crusader and Hannah-Barbara's Scooby-Doo show together. While some episodes focus on baddies we're familiar with (Joker and The Penguin, et al), Filmation have created a slew of villains that are so poorly constructed (and come across as a poor man's Scooby "monster") they just get boring after a while. Plus, they've reconstructed characters such as Catwoman so that they end up being mostly unrecognizable compared to their comics' counterpart.

Add to this an overdone does of comic relief slapstick at the hands of (most annoying character ever), Bat-Mite. This impish creature was Filmation's attempt to lighten-up proceedings and not an episode passes where Bat-Mite isn't getting himself and his suitors into various misunderstanding while spouting one-liners and proclaiming, "All I wanted to do was help." I can't begin to tell you how damn much I hate this character. It's a character along the lines of Scrappy-Doo in the sense that the minute they show-up you groan.

There's also a repetitive disco inspired score to deal with and lots of overdone sound effects. Most of the episodes are dull, the unserious tone doesn't help much, and the animation effort is pretty minimal. There's not even enough unintentional laughs here to keep you interested (though lines like, "you're getting tough, dick", gave me a guffaw) and the show is basically an embarrassing stain on the Batman resume. It's a good thing that the show only lasted sixteen episodes, because even that small number is painful enough.

If you're interested in the animated adventures of the caped crusader you'll be better serviced by the early 90's Batman: The Animated Series or even the later off-shoots Batman Beyond or The Batman - at least those three shows keep a consistent tone and stay more true to the character and you don't feel like the makers of it are thumbing their nose at the comics fans. (Chris Hartley, 7/26/07)

Directed By: Various.
Written By: Various.

Starring: Adam West, Burt Ward.

Picture Ratio: Full Frame.

Picture Quality: Presented in its original broadcast format, The New Adventures Of Batman looks pretty "bleh". A low-budget show, this is a soft and dirty transfer that is littered with specks and looks pretty weak on DVD considering the effort Warner has put into other animated discs.

Extras: For a three disc set there's not much on here as we get a sneak peek at the upcoming (and very cool looking) Superman/Doomsday animated movie, there's trailers for other Warner cartoon releases, and there's a featurette entitled "The Dark Knight Revisisted" which gathers together many people who've worked in the Batman universe to try and defend the show (though Paul Dini, who created the 90's show, somewhat admits the show sucked).