The show was created by Mark Hall and Brian Cosgrove for their production company, Cosgrove Hall Films. Danger Mouse was based on Patrick McGoohan's lead role in "Danger Man". The show was intended to have a more serious tone as seen in the pilot episode but Mike Harding (who wrote the music for the show) gave Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall the idea to make the series silly. "The characters had got stuck in reality and were doing James Bond type things rooted in the solid real world," said Harding, "I argued that once you invented a Mouse Secret Agent then all of creation and a good chunk of not creation was his oyster. In other words we could be as barmy (crazy) as we wanted." In an interview with "The Guardian", Cosgrove said "We reckoned a secret service mouse foiling the plans of an evil toad – Baron Silas Greenback – was suitably ridiculous."