The Mystery Is Getting Bigger as “Mystery Lane” Returns for Season Two and a New Movie

There are always more mysteries to solve, but Clever and Bro’s world is about to become considerably bigger than the streets of London.

Following the international success of HARI’s “Mystery Lane,” France Télévisions has commissioned a second season of the animated investigative comedy, bringing another 26 22-minute adventures to the growing series. Yet a new season is only the beginning, as HARI is also developing an origin feature film, “Mystery Lane: The First Case,” while opening the doors between “Mystery Lane” and some of the studio’s other animated worlds.

For Clever and Bro, there is going to be plenty to investigate.

The series has already traveled remarkably well since its debut, now airing across 84 territories around the world. Broadcasters include BBC in the U.K., ABC in Australia, Rai in Italy, Super RTL in Germany, Youku in China, Télé-Québec in Canada and Primo TV in the United States, among many others.

Season two will bring Clever, Bro and Inspector McFlare back together as even more strange events begin unfolding across London. Some familiar enemies have managed a spectacular escape from GreenSide, and the culprit behind everything appears to be someone the young detectives already know very well: Atlas is back.

While the new mysteries expand the series itself, some of the most interesting cases will take Clever and Bro beyond the usual boundaries of their own show.

“Grizzy and the Lemmings” will make a special cameo during the season as HARI’s global slapstick series celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2027. The crossover will see Clever and Bro investigating the files of a secret society tracking animals displaying some particularly strange, cartoon-like abilities. Their latest subjects? A Canadian grizzly bear and a group of rodents who seem to possess rather suspicious squash-and-stretch powers.

Anyone familiar with “Grizzy and the Lemmings” can probably imagine how smoothly that investigation is going to go.

Another two episodes will introduce a mysterious cat known as “The Phantom of Paris,” giving audiences their first look at a character HARI has considerably larger plans for. “The Phantom of Paris” is currently in active development as its own series and takes place within the same world as “Mystery Lane.”

All of these connections are part of something HARI calls the “Grizzyverse,” a shared universe designed to connect the studio’s different properties while still allowing each show to stand on its own. That means even series with very different storytelling styles can potentially cross paths, from the dialogue-free slapstick chaos of “Grizzy and the Lemmings” and “The Weasy Family” to the mystery and action-adventure storytelling of “Mystery Lane” and “The Phantom of Paris.”

It is an ambitious idea, particularly because these aren’t simply characters from nearly identical shows being placed beside one another. The fun comes from seeing what happens when those different storytelling rules collide. Clever and Bro are detectives who solve mysteries using logic and observation. Grizzy and the Lemmings inhabit a world where cartoon physics are practically a fact of life. Naturally, putting the two together means someone eventually has to investigate why these Canadian animals apparently don’t obey normal laws of reality.

Meanwhile, “Mystery Lane: The First Case” will head in the opposite direction by looking backward. The planned feature film is being developed as an origin story, taking audiences to where the “Mystery Lane” adventure began.

Taken together, the projects suggest that HARI sees much more ahead for Clever and Bro than another collection of cases. “Mystery Lane” has already built an international audience, but Season Two now provides an opportunity to deepen its world while connecting it to characters and stories beyond London. The movie can reveal where everything started, “The Phantom of Paris” can open another corner of the same universe, and even Grizzy and those endlessly chaotic Lemmings can somehow find themselves inside a detective file.

For a pair of young investigators, that should provide enough mysteries to keep Clever and Bro busy for quite some time.

Although figuring out the Lemmings might be their toughest case yet.