Donkey Kong Planet

The French logo of Donkey Kong Planet

Donkey Kong Planet^[1] (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.