Totally Spies!

Premise

The series centers around the adventures of three teenage girls from Beverly Hills – Sam, Alex and Clover – who live a double life as spies working for the World Organization of Human Protection (WOOHP). The girls are recruited by the organization's leader, Jerry, to solve worsening crime conditions that arise across the globe. Many of their missions involve dealing with disgruntled villains who have been wronged in some form during their past. Several have exacted revenge on the spies by invading their personal lives. Framing each episode is a subplot that focuses on the girls' daytime lives as high school (and later university) students, dealing with relationships and their school rival Mandy.

Characters

Supporting (or hindering) the girls are the following regular characters:

Development and production

The show's conception came from the rise of girl band and female singers in the music industry. Wanting to capitalize on the niche, David Michel and Vincent Chalvon-Demersay put their idea into development, which later shifted into production within a year. According to Michel, the series' animation style was intended to incorporate anime influences. The production company, Marathon Media, intended on building on the series brand by forming a three-piece girl band, utilizing German talk show Arabella to create it. Using a panel of judges, 20 demo videos were selected and the winners were selected based on the strength of their performance and the show's viewers. The band was selected and released a single in the spring of 2002, through EMI. According to managing director Dirk Fabarius, "The plan is to eventually create an entire album and establish and promote Totally Spies as a real band." While the idea did not materialize, the series was promoted through other merchandising. It was announced in the spring of 2001 that the series would air in the autumn on ABC Family, and would be distributed to the European countries in the following year.

In an interview with WorldScreen.com, Michel said that prior to his show, there were a lot of boy action-adventure shows and practically nothing for girls, yet in pop culture, there was Britney Spears and Spice Girls. He said that the characters are heavily inspired by the movie Clueless and wanted to mix that with a James Bond format. When they first pitched the show, it had a moderate response, but when the first season was broadcast, the Charlie's Angels film came out, and suddenly the market was full of girl show properties.

According to an article "Achieving a Global Reach on Children's Cultural Markets" by Valerie-Ines de la Ville and Laurent Durup, the series was originally designed to reach an American audience, but has garnered appeal from its humor "based on a stereotypical European vision of American references" while "appearing to be original and innovative to the U.S. audience". Producer and artistic director Stephane Berry said that the style "is a melting between the American style, which associates action and comedy, and Japanese design for the aesthetic environment and the emotions expressed through the large eyes of the characters." Some of the common references have included Charlie's Angels, Beverly Hills, The Avengers, James Bond and its gadgets, anime, and Cat's Eye.

The head writers for the show were Robert and Michelle Lamoreaux who were based in Los Angeles, and who had worked on Nickelodeon shows. Demersay and Stephane Berry had both previously worked with Saban entertainment in Europe. In a GeoCities interview, Kate Griffin, who voices Alex, mentioned that the typical session for the three girls is that they would record as an ensemble, but through a phone patch, with Hale and Baker calling from Los Angeles, and herself in Toronto.

Following the end of the fifth season, the series's movie, Totally Spies! The Movie, was produced and released to theaters in France on July 22, 2009. The movie received a television release in the United States, on April 25 the following year, coinciding with the airing of the series fifth season there.

In August 2011, Marathon Media confirmed that production for the sixth season was underway and set to premiere in 2013. It was later confirmed that 26 episodes would be produced and that the show would be licensed in Spain and Latin America, with European territories following suit. To coincide with the sixth season's premiere, Zodiak Kids CP Paris, in association with Château de Versailles Spectacles (CVS) and TF1, organized an event at the Palace of Versailles, taking place during the summer of 2013. The event would be preceded with activities including a screening of a special featuring the spies on a mission in the palace gardens.

Episodes

The series comprises six seasons divided into 156 episodes. Framing each episode is a side story in which the girls deal with high school life and its situations. Most of the episodes are self-contained. In season 3, also titled Totally Spies! Undercover, the three girls share a villa, and at the end of that season, they are promoted to super spies in the organization and are referred to as such for season 4. Season 5 follows the girls' adventures as they continue onto university.

In 2013, the show was revived for a sixth season, premiering at an event at the Palace of Versailles. 26 episodes were broadcast on French television and networks across Europe starting in September 4, 2013. In Canada, the sixth season premiered on September 7, 2014 on Teletoon, and on September 6 on sister station Télétoon.

Broadcast

Totally Spies! premiered on November 3, 2001 on ABC Family. It later premiered in Europe on pay-TV and terrestrial channels such as Germany's ProSieben, France's TF1, United Kingdom's Channel 4 or the localised Fox Kids channels throughout the region during the spring of 2002. The show moved to Cartoon Network in late 2003 in the United States, where it attracted 1.6 million viewers (aged 4 – 10) daily and continued airing until 2010. The show has attracted over one million viewers in France since its debut. It was re-licensed and its sixth season, along with Totally Spies! The Movie and the show's spin off The Amazing Spiez!. The show aired its sixth season in France and is being broadcast around Europe. In Canada, season 6 began airing on September 7, 2014 on Teletoon, and on September 6 on Télétoon. The show has been broadcast worldwide on various networks, such as TF1 in France; Teletoon in Canada, Cartoon Network in the USA; Fox Kids, Jetix, Cartoon Network and currently Boomerang in Latin America and Brazil on pay-television; Rede Globo in Brazil on terrestrial TV; MBC 3 in the Arab World; Fox Kids, Jetix, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Reception

Joly Herman of Common Sense Media gave the series a mixed review, writing that "We think it's a decent show to catch once in a while, but anything more regular might give viewers the like, slightest headache." Joe Corey of Inside Pulse had a more positive review, calling the show "fun enough for small kids who want a Charlie's Angels undercover action show. The trio do their best to balance the fun of being in the espionage game without it being too risky." Matt Hinrichs of DVD Talk gave a positive review, calling the action in the first three seasons "decently written enough for adults to enjoy." The Parents Television Council, in their March 2006 report, noted that the show did not contain offensive language, but expressed concern about the "nature of the violence of the show" in an episode where rats were released to psychologically torture Jerry and Clover, and the sexual content exampled by a sunblock ad by a bikini-clad woman.

The show was also described as risky because it had targeted girls with a genre typically associated with boys' shows, and that it was animated when the girls were more interested in live shows. After four seasons, the show had reached over 130 countries and was met with enthusiasm among ages 6–11 that included both girls and boys, and had a Pokémon-like appeal to a broad range of age and gender. In an interview before season three, David Michel said, "The one thing that surprised us the most is the consistency in the male / female viewership split: from Brazil to Italy, we have a 50% boys 50% girls audience ratio, whereas everybody was predicting the show would score very low on boys." Scott Stoute of ScreenRant listed the show among his "10 Girl Cartoons (That Guys Secretly Love)" list.

Home video and DVD

Goodtimes Entertainment released the first twelve episodes of the show's first season on VHS and DVD in 2004 in three volumes: Totally Spies Volume 1: First Secret Missions, Totally Spies Volume 2: The Getaway, and Totally Spies Volume 3: Spies Attack. Coinciding with the production and release of the show's sixth season, New Video Group/Flatiron Film Company acquired American DVD rights for the series as well as some digital rights for the first three seasons of the series. They've released the first and second seasons (in two volumes each), as well as a box set containing seasons one through three. The third season was finally released in two volumes on January 14, 2014.

Video games

The Totally Spies series was initially followed up with two video games titled Totally Spies! and Totally Spies! 2: Undercover. Both were developed by Mistic Software and published by Atari for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and/or Nintendo DS. IGN rated Totally Spies! 2: Undercover with a score of 4.0/10 citing poor overall game presentation. Totally Spies! 3: Secret Agents was released in Europe and Australia for the Nintendo DS. Totally Spies! Totally Party was released in North America, Europe and Australia for the PlayStation 2, Wii and PC.

Spin-off

A spin-off series called The Amazing Spiez! features new characters as spies, retaining Jerry as a regular character in the show. While the series focuses on four young teenage siblings, Lee, Megan, Marc and Tony Clark, the three spy girls make occasional appearances. The show had its world premiere on March 15, 2009, on Disney Channel Asia; and its US premiere on April 26, 2010, on Cartoon Network. In Canada, the show premiered on September 2, 2010 on Teletoon. Only the first season and ten Season 2 episodes aired in the US.

Totally Spies! also had a cross-over episode in season 5 with Martin Mystery, a Marathon-produced series that aired from 2003 to 2006.

Comics and books

A Totally Spies! comics were released monthly in Sweden. Five books with about 90 pages came out in Brazil as well. Each book represents an episode from the series. There is another comic called Totally Spies Unleashed; this opens with "I Hate the 80s!", in which a bad guy, Boogie Gus, has invented a retro ray that de-ages people. The second story, "Attack of the 50 Ft. Tall Mandy", turns their nemesis into a giant in a plot that involves a beauty contest and an escaped evil scientist. Chapter books have also been released.