Rejoice! The most tolerable characters from the DreamWorks Madagascar film series are getting their own cartoon on Nickelodeon. "The penguins are psychotic" – a line uttered by Ben Stiller's Alex the Lion, was one of the more memorable lines from the first Madagascar film. In The Penguins of Madagascar, the crack unit of Skipper (still voiced by Tom McGrath), Kowalski, Rico and Private are back at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan and having all new adventures.

A couple of other Madagascar characters will be making their way over to the new show. The most notable is the wacky King Julien, who was voiced in the movies by Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat). Julien will provide the inexplicable lunacy that clashes with the Penguins black-and-white covert operations. Julien, and his side-lemur Maurice will be on the show, but will not be voiced by Cohen or Cedric the Entertainer, in the case of Maurice. Andy Richter is slated to return as the pipsqueak lemur, Mort.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, speaking to the TCA at the recent press tour, announced that, even though it was risky to take these characters and entrust them to the creative staff at Nickelodeon, he couldn't be "more proud of the work that they've done." In fact, he's never been in a situation where a TV show has already had a full extra order asked for - before the series had even hit the air. Penguins has had an additional 26 episodes ordered, bringing its total now to 52. When asked about how he came up with the voice for Skipper, Tom McGrath said, "I was doing my poor man's Charlton Heston, Robert Stack, and Peter Graves."