Detective Jenny (Johnsonverse)

Detective Jenny is an American animated series that ran on WBC's Saturday Morning block from September 3, 1994 to December 29, 2001, and again since September 2, 2017. The series follows the adventures of 11-year-old Jenny G. Dennis, voiced by Tara Charendoff, who took the surname Strong after her marriage in 2000, and her best friends Olga Isabel, voiced by Cree Summer, Kristen Smith, voiced by Kristen Schaal, Terry Jones, voiced by Tress MacNeille, and Louise Savage, voiced by Alanna Ubach, five child detectives in the employ of the UN to uncover such dark things as drug smugglers, arms traffickers, human slavers, and terrorists. The series was critically acclaimed, and launched the careers of Kristen Schaal and Alanna Ubach.

Development
In late 1992, Tammy Jo Johnson, known for being a doodler, drew up five characters while at a Howard Johnson's during a visit at Times Square. Johnson named the five characters' given names after relatives of the Johnson Family (e.g. Jenny was named after Johnathan Johnson's wife Jenny Anne Daniels; an urban legend postulates that Jenny Smith was named after the character, as she was born during the series' first run). At that point, she immediately began making a series of comic books based on the five characters, naming the series Detective Jenny, about the five girls employed by the UN to uncover various criminal activities, under the Chalke Comics banner (later Johnson Comics after 2010). The series was an instant hit, and Johnson's brother, Stephen J. Chalke, saw potential in the characters, and started creating the television series in mid-1993. The pilot, finished in December 1993, was sold to WBC, where Sheldon Johnson, Jr., and his brother Craig, helped Tammy Jo and Stephen develop the series.

Premise
The series follows five young girls working for a special task unit of the United Nations. They were selected because of their unassuming looks. Known as "Team Jenny", they are tasked with infiltrating, uncovering, and in many cases, destroying illegal operations.

The series has been described as "deceptive". On the outside, it seems like a generic girls' show, but the series is actually very dark and mature, serving to deconstruct the child hero concept. The heroines often find themselves in dangerous situations, and carry firearms that they do not hesitate to use to kill. In fact, they seem to have no qualms about killing, and will not take chances with their enemies. In addition, innocent civilians, even children, are often caught in the crossfire. As a result, they are viewed as outcasts in school because of their line of work, and don't have any friends aside from each other. They have also been left with mental and emotional scars as the series progressed, and since no therapist will see them, these scars only worsened to the point that Terry once ripped out and ate the heart of a drug lord in a Season 8 episode, and Louise also once burned a terrorist alive and fed his body parts to her dogs in a Season 6 episode.

The series also involves such themes as drugs, smuggling, slavery, human trafficking, and terrorism. Villains are either depicted as depraved individuals, or good people forced into a life of crime. It is for this reason that several one-off villains were redeemed, but usually died in the process.

This was the first series to use Johnson's famed hybrid approach, mixing animation with live-action elements such as miniatures and live pyrotechnics. In fact, early in production, Johnson Television was in talks with Gerry Anderson to make a Supermarionation series out of the concept; had this gone through, it would have been Anderson's first series to use Supermarionation since The Secret Service; negotiations fell through when Anderson wanted to use the Supermacromation technique used in Terrahawks.