Growing up in a very small Medieval kingdom twelve year old Jane (voiced by Tajja Isen) has no desire to become a lady-in-waiting like her mother. She wants to be a knight. Jane gets her chance after rescuing a young prince from a misunderstood Dragon (Adrian Truss) who becomes her best friend. King Caradoc (Juan Chioran) promptly makes Jane an apprentice knight serving under wise Sir Theodore (Aron Tager). Although Jane's good sense and gutsy can-do attitude serve to annoy fellow apprentice Gunther (Noah Reid) and his scheming father Merchant Magnus Breech (Clive Walton), she continues to prove her worth through numerous adventures with her sarcastic but loving and loyal Dragon at her side.
Five years before How to Train Your Dragon (2010) this modest but charming computer animated children's series won a faithful fan following. Adapted from a series of children's books written by co-creator Martin Baynton, Jane and the Dragon reached the screen courtesy of seasoned Canadian animation outfit Nelvana and Peter Jackson's New Zealand based effects company Weta who used motion capture technology similar to their animation of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), only far more primitive. Although the animation itself is nowhere as expressive as, say, a Pixar film, the CGI has a charming storybook feel. More importantly the inventive and often witty scripts etch compelling and likeable characters from whose vibrant personalities spring a host of memorable stories.
Heart and soul of the show are undoubtedly the titular duo, appealingly voiced by perky Tajja Isen and a delightfully droll Adrian Truss whose sardonic asides are the highlight of many an episode. The friendship between this twosome is well drawn particularly in a rather sweet episode detailing Dragon's growing over-protectiveness of Jane and where poison berries rob Jane of all memories of her closest friend. On a psychological level Dragon (who is big, strong and fearsome enough to do as he pleases, answering to none even the King, except perhaps for one equally strong-minded little girl) seems to embody the free-thinking non-conformist spirit that spurred Jane to want to become a knight in the first place. However, the stories have strong ethical themes placing Jane in moral dilemmas where she ultimately ends up doing the right thing under trying circumstances. Integrity is another theme deftly explored here as the creators fashion young Jane into a more admirable role model for girls than the usual shallow 'girl power' or kick-ass action gal archetypes featured in TV cartoons.
Of the supporting players the most endearing sub-plot concerns the tentative romance involving awkward teenage gardener Rake (Will Bowes) and sweet cook Pepper (Sunday Muse) with a winningly weird note injected in stoic blacksmith Smithy's (Alex House) running obsession with his pig. What's going on there? Less endearing are the smart-arse Jester (Mark Rendall), perplexingly set up as Jane's semi-love interest, and the rather snooty Royal family who, with the exception of adorable gap-toothed little Princess Lavinia (Isabel de Carteret), emerge as rash, judgemental and plain foolish at times with the 'common' characters subject to their capricious whims. Of course this is a fair representation of the Middle Ages. Indeed many stories find Jane behaving more like a lawyer than a knight, defending various other characters from King Caradoc's rash judgement which is pleasingly subversive for a children's cartoon. It also has one of the catchiest theme tunes on television: "Hey now, hey now-now, Jane and the Dragon are best friends now!"
