Hurricanes (TV series)
| Hurricanes | |
|---|---|
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| Starring | see cast list |
| Country of origin |
United Kingdom United States |
| No. of episodes | 65 |
| Production | |
| Running time |
30 minutes (incl. commercials) |
| Production company(s) |
DIC Entertainment; Siriol Productions; STV Productions (Scottish Television) |
| Distributor | Bohbot Entertainment |
| Release | |
| Original network |
ITV (CITV) syndicated |
| Original release | 12 September 1993 – 1 January 1997 |
Hurricanes is an animated series produced by DIC Entertainment, Siriol Productions and Scottish Television.[1] The show was distributed by Bohbot Entertainment for syndication outside of the UK, with Scottish Television controlling the UK rights. The series first aired in 1993 and ended in 1997.
Summary
The series focused on a fictional football team headed by the female inheritor of the teams' legacy, Amanda Carey and their coach, Jock Stone. Stone was notably based on Celtic F.C. manager Jock Stein. During the series, the Hurricanes football team would either be battling a renegade football club, The Gorgons managed by Stavros Garkos, for pitch supremacy or having wild, unpredictable adventures off the field in exotic world touring locations.
Despite such a lengthy episode number, and a cult following among British football fans who watched it faithfully in reruns during the football seasons, the Hurricanes remained a fairly dormant and minor addition to BKN's library, and its impact worldwide is barely minimum, its most memorable aspect being its theme song ("We're the Hurricanes").
The programme had been aired in weekly first-run syndication in the United States in the late 1990s, though it did not see mainstream broadcasting until the fall of 2012 when Cookie Jar Entertainment (whom DIC had merged with), which had re-acquired the rights to the show from BKN through a bankruptcy in 2010, added the program to the weekday Cookie Jar-controlled This Is for Kids lineup on the This TV digital subchannel network.
In 2015, STV Glasgow and STV Edinburgh began re-airing the show daily and also added the programme to the STV Player.[2]
Cast
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Episodes
Series One, 1993
Series Two, 1994
Series Three, 1995
Series Four, 1996
Season Five, 1997
CharactersThe Hispanola HurricanesAmanda Carey is the 16-year-old owner of the Hurricanes. Inheriting the position after her father disappears, she is involved with the management of her soccer team rather than hiring another manager or selling the team. Unlike Stavros Garkos, Amanda always respects the integrity of the game and believes in fair play. She owns a Scottish Terrier named Dribble who serves as one of the team's mascots. Jock Stone is the wise but no-nonsense Scottish head coach of the Hurricanes. His main priority is football and he's not fond of when the team is late for or skips out on his training. Cal Casey: The Hurricanes' team captain from the United States. If the team faces a problem outside of football or if the Gorgons are up to no good, Cal is usually there to help set things right. Plato Quiñones: A naive Brazilian who believes in superstitions like vampires. He does not wear footwear and plays soccer barefoot (which is not allowed in professional competitions in real life). In the episode "Go Ape!", Plato smuggles a monkey he named Topper into stadium and he becomes Plato's pet and one of the team's mascots. Napper Thompson: An Englishman who enjoys poetry and sci-fi stories. Tends to get into more strange situations than the others. In "Traitor", Garkos has a transmitter unknowingly put in his filling so he can steal secrets from the Hurricanes. In "Lord Napper of Stepney". Napper inherited his Uncle's fortune on the condition he never plays soccer ever again. In "The Great Defensive Wall of China", a cult believes Napper is "the one". Is usually seen hanging out with Cal. Helmut Beethoven and Jorg Beethoven: German twins who despite being confident in their abilities as the team's strikers, often feud with each other. Helmut is slimmer, taller and insists on being the driver of the team bus. Jorg is shorter, more muscular and wears a distinctive headband. Stats Hiro: The team's right-midfielder hailing from Japan. He's the smallest and one of the most agile members. He is very intelligent and mechanically inclined creating a flying camera called the Flying Eye and a high-tech "computer-'bot" called MATT (Multimedia Analysis and Training Toolkit). In "Team Spirit" he injured his leg and was replaced in their game against the Eagles with Little Bear. Dino Allegro: The Italian goalie of the team. Dino kept a picture of his brother in his bag to look at before every match. Garkos discovered this and had Rebo take it crushing his confidence. It took a visit from his brother to get his head back in the game. He is also afraid of space and flying in a space shuttle. Oliver Marley, also known as Rude, is a player from Jamaica. He was a high school drop-out, until "Marley in Chains" where he gets his high school certificate after encouragement from Napper who also didn't finish school. Georgie Wright: An English footballer who always calls the coin toss at the start of the match. He cannot swim and is afraid or large bodies of water because of it. Papillon: The team's talented, French striker with a one word name similar to Pelé. He has an eye for the ladies and has an overall suave personality. He also likes driving fast cars and racing. Toro Contrais: A bulky player from Spain who is slightly overconfident on the field. When Jock temporarily suspends him, Toro becomes a pro-wrestler named "The Masked Matador". Andy Stone: Son of Jock Stone, Andy is the team's physician. He created a revolutionary cold-compress which he used in a game against Zambia. The Garkos GorgonsThe Gorgons are a team of violent players who usually utilize illegal tactics inside or outside the field. Their headquarters is inside a volcano in the Island of Garkos. The team includes: Stavros Garkos is the villain who owns the Garkos Gorgons, a football team of thugs who often use dirty tricks not only to defeat the Hurricanes, but also help Stavros Garkos in other dirty schemes. He is voiced by Jay Brazeau. He runs Garkos Enterprises and is known for using the name Medusa as a pseudonym for some of his companies and breaking Medusa-head staffs during moments of anger. Stavros Garkos is the most persistent of the villains from Hurricanes. In most of his appearances, he tries to steal the Hurricanes' status as world's greatest football team and/or make large sums of money. Garkos' interests also include damaging the Hurricanes' image (even when he doesn't seem to gain anything from this) and his attempts in 'proving' football as a Greek sport. Stavros Garkos holds many companies around the world. Even though it was never stated which ones are branches of Garkos Enterprises and which ones are not. Stavros Garkos also owns an unnamed insurance company that covers the above-mentioned satellite. Garkos Enterprises has an office in London, even though it was unclear which kind of activities he develops there. Wyn Smithe and Genghis Khan: Wyn and Genghis are Stavros Garkos' best players, and are the ones most often enlisted to assist Stavros with his schemes. It is rare to see the Gorgons playing without them both, except through injury, and even rarer to see one of them appearing in an episode without the other. One instance of this occurring is in When Hurricanes Collide, when Genghis appeared but Wyn did not. Even though Stavros favours them, they have little loyalty in return; they once attempted to steal a gold mine so as to be able to stop working for Stavros. Rebo: Rebo's biggest role in Stavros Garkos's dirty schemes was in Blood Match, when Rebo stole Dino Allegro's lucky charm, damaging his abilities as the Hurricanes's main goalkeeper. He also makes a cameo helping Wyn and Genghis to keep the Hurricanes from playing a fund-raiser game to save Inverfinnan Park, home to Jock Stone's former team Inverfinnan Celtics (a spoof of Celtic FC of Scotland), from being bought by Garkos. Most of Rebo's other appearances is simply playing football. Benny the Viking: This unpopular Swede is hated by his fellow patriots for his dirty play. Stavros Garkos tries to revert it by hiring a publicist who puts Benny to compete against Cal Casey on a game show where Casey not only defeats Benny, but also teaches him the value of good sportsmanship. A lesson that he only practices at his home country, this enhancing his popularity for a price Stavros Garkos didn't like to pay. Lobo: Lobo was once nominated for the title of Spain's best football player. His rival for the title was Toro, from the Hurricanes. To help his player to get the title, Stavros Garkos kidnaps Toro's sister, Maria, as part of a plan to ruin his popularity. The Garkos FamilyStavros Garkos sometimes enlists the help of some relatives for some dirty tactics. Here we have some of them: Spiro Garkos: Stavros's brother. Spiro is nowhere to be seen without a uniform and on his very first appearance he's called by Amanda a "mister-in-charge-of-everything". What could be noticed from his first appearance in Stowaway, when he was revealed to be the coach of the Gorgons' Youth Team, the Police Chief of the Island of Garkos and the head of Child Welfare. In Around the World in 90 Minutes, Spiro is the admiral of the Garkon Navy and helped his brother to take over the aircraft carrier the Hurricanes were using to play football at sea. He also makes a cameo appearance in There's Only One Jock Stone as captain of Stavros Garkos's cruise ship. Melinda Garkos: Stavros's sister. Melinda helps her brother in anything he wants to, no matter how low she has to get. Her low acts include making people ruined by Stavros Garkos sell their homes to him (Water, Water, Everywhere), stealing artifacts from ancient Egyptian Pyramids (Serpents of the Nile), passing herself as the legendary Medusa (The curse of the gorgon), and helping the Gorgons to forge evidence to blackmail referees on Dino's snapshoot. Irena Bole: Stavros's niece. Stavros Garkos had a scheme involving a childhood friend of Cal Casey. This friend had criminal records and is now a goalkeeper for the L.A. Lasers. Irena only agreed to help her uncle in exchange of becoming the first female vice-president of Garkos Enterprises. When the plan fails, Garkos says he wouldn't hire her even as a coffee-lady. Since she's single (she's called Ms.) and doesn't bear the name Garkos, we can assume Spiro and Melinda aren't Stavros Garkos's only siblings. Stavros Garkos IV: Stavros's namesake and look-alike great-grandson from the future. Stavros Garkos had mortgaged all his companies to bet against the Hurricanes and lost. Because of that, all Stavros IV inherited was his football team. To revert this situation, Stavros IV sends a robot player named The Relegator to change the game results. Stavros Garkos was reluctant about this because he couldn't have a great-grandson for not even having grandchildren, as he stated, but he started believing when the bet (something he never expected to meet someone who already knew about) was mentioned. For a final test, Garkos asks the Relegator what he thinks about rules and he says they must be broken, this making Stavros believe he's been sent by a Garkos. The robot fails and the Plan B destroys a factory, forcing Garkos to pay for the damages, creating an alternate future where Stavros IV washes the Hurricanes's uniforms. Since this was a dream of Napper Thompson, it doesn't affect the continuity of the series. Dream or not, this is, so far, the strongest clue pointing Stavros Garkos as a father of at least one child. Garkos EnterprisesStavros Garkos holds many companies around the world. Even though it was never stated which ones are branches of Garkos Enterprises and which ones are not, here we can see a list of these companies: Gorgon World: A nightmarish theme park Stavros Garkos has built in L.A. by destroying Cal Casey's neighborhood. Garkos intended to destroy a Sports Centre where underprivileged kids could learn soccer, so he could build a parking lot for his park. The park and this story took place in Home Game. It was never revealed if Garkos ever opened this park, or what happened to it. Garkos International Holding: First (or only) mentioned in Hot Dog, this holding company holds The Hotel Jasper, where Stavros Garkos tried to frame Rude Marley. It's unknown what else is held by Garkos International Holding. Medusa Arms Hotel: Only seen in Target: Winston, this is, according to Amanda, the hotel where the Gorgons go to sleep when they are in Hispanola. It was never said if the hotel belongs to Garkos or not, but the name "Medusa" and its connections to the Gorgons make us assume it does belong to him. Medusa Gold-Mining Company: First seen in Team Spirit, Garkos utilized it to extract gold from a piece of land stolen from Native Americans. Garkos Finance Company: In Techno-Team, this company helped Stavros Garkos to take over Walker Laboratories when its former owner, Mickey Walker, had missed the deadline to pay the mortgage. Medusa Network: Objecting to have a Television network that would show sport events around the world, Stavros Garkos opened Medusa Network in When Hurricanes Collide. When Garkos tried to use its satellite to destroy a space station where five of the Hurricanes were located, Dino lets the satellite loose in space. It is unclear if Garkos ever placed it back on its original orbit or not. Stavros Garkos also owns an unnamed insurance company that covers the above-mentioned satellite. In Ecosphere of Death, Stavros Garkos gambles against a casino owner named Jackson Black and wins Black's ecosphere. Part of the deal was that every time Garkos won, Black would have a chance to recover what he lost. So, Black made a bet against the Gorgons. The Hurricanes won the game and Garkos had to return the ecosphere. In The Flying Eye, Garkos tried to force relatives of Amanda Carey out of their land so he would open a water park developed by Garkos Enterprises. Garkos Enterprises has an office in London, even though it was unclear which kind of activities he develops there. List of Hurricanes' opponentsNote: Edit this list with the names of the teams from their corresponding countries
International broadcast
References
External links
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