The series had its origins as a British student revue act at the
University of Nottingham in the 1990s, written and performed by The Pox, aka Dan Chambers, Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler. With ambitions to turn their live act into animation the trio presented their ideas to Pesky, where Chambers was working as an animator, and who had just been approached by the
BBC to develop a new animated series for the relaunch of its
CBBC website. The original 10 two-and-a-half-minute 'shorts' were shown online, then on CBBC television in 2002 and the episode "Ocean of Terror" was awarded the Prix des Internautes at the
Annecy International Animated Film Festival that summer, and went on in 2003 to win a People's Choice Award at
Anima Mundi in Brazil. By 2004 plans were hatched to create a longer-running television series based on the Adrenalini Brothers. And in 2005 the series of 78 seven-minute episodes went into production as a UK-Canadian co-production, with pre- and post-production by Pesky in their London studio, animation by Studio B in Vancouver, and scripting shared between writers on both sides of the Atlantic. The series first aired as part of
Sunday Pants on
Cartoon Network in the United States on 2 October 2005, and then it first aired as a full series in March 2006 on
CITV in the UK, then
YTV on 7 May 2006 (and later also
VRAK.TV in Canada) followed by
Cartoon Network across Europe and Asia. The series has enjoyed particular success in Australia where it was first aired by
ABC Australia on 2 March 2006 in a regular early evening slot until 2010. In 2006 the series began the year by picking up a Pulcinella Award at the Cartoons On The Bay festival in Italy and ended the year with the episode "Hunchback of Heartbreak" winning a
BAFTA for Best Animation Series. ==Broadcast==