Danger Mouse, Special Agent Oso and James Bond

A little while ago, I posted a tweet about a couple of Bond-inspired episode titles from the latest series of Danger Mouse, featuring the world's greatest secret agent. I was subsequently alerted to another children’s animated series, Special Agent Oso, whose episode titles are also Bond-inspired.
 

The title of episode 13 of series 2 (2017) of Danger Mouse

 
Special Agent Oso is a pre-school series about a bear who, in each episode, helps a child complete a task (for instance, flying a kite or setting the table). The series was originally broadcast on the Disney Channel in 2009. Series 1 was broadcast between 2009 and 2010, the second from 2010 to 2012. In total, 116 episodes were shown, each one with a title that plays on the names of the Bond films or, in two cases, the titles of Bond songs.
 
There is, for example, ‘From Grandma With Love’ (From Russia With Love), ‘A Zoo To A Thrill’ (A View To A Kill), ‘The Chairs Are Not Enough’ (The World Is Not Enough), and Dr Snow (Dr No). Some of the titles are unintentionally ironic. ‘License to Cheer Up’ is obviously based on Licence to Kill, which, until the Daniel Craig era, had been the most serious and humourless Bond film of the series. ‘Drink Another Day’ (Die Another Day), meanwhile, could be the very words Bond lives by.
 
Just for fun, I catalogued all the titles and did some basic analysis to see if any patterns emerged in the selection of Bond film titles. The most commonly used film name is Goldfinger with 11 occurrences. Octopussy, Tomorrow Never Dies, Moonraker, and Never Say Never Again are the least frequently used film names, with one occurrence each.
 

Frequency of Bond film titles used in Special Agent Oso

 
There is no clear difference in the choice of titles between the two series; generally, the most commonly used film names in series 1 remain common in series 2, but there are some interesting differences. Diamonds Are Forever, Licence to Kill and The World Is Not Enough are used less in series 2, while Dr No, The Man With The Golden Gun, and Thunderball increase in frequency in series 2. The most substantial increase is Quantum of Solace, which isn’t represented at all in series 1, but accounts for almost 6% of titles in series 2. Series 1 was broadcast in 2009, after Quantum of Solace had been released, but presumably planning of the series began before the film’s release date of 2008.
 

Comparative proportions of film titles used in series 1 and 2 of Special Agent Oso

 
What is mildly surprising is the middle ranking of From Russia With Love. The film title is a favourite of newspaper headline writers, but evidently the writers of Special Agent Oso haven’t been quite so keen. It seems that what is suitable for the press isn’t necessarily so suitable or amenable for children’s programming. The survey of Special Agent Oso titles also shows that Bond film names have varying levels of adaptability. Octopussy and Moonraker have poor adaptability and are little used, while Goldfinger has a high level of adaptability and is prolific.
 
Returning to Danger Mouse, since the cartoon was relaunched in 2015, there have been only ten episodes with Bond-inspired titles. While this is too small a dataset for comparison with Special Agent Oso, it is revealing that the only Bond film title to be used twice in Danger Mouse is Goldfinger – Greenfinger (also the name of a Special Agent Oso episode) and Gold Flinger.