Mole Miner

 is an Japanese-American animated series produced by, Jazz Television Media, and with animation produced by  for seasons 1-5 and  for seasons 6 and 7. The series premiered on November 5, 2001 on.

The series ran for 7 seasons from 2001 to 2007 and ran for 119 episodes, being one of the longest-running PBS Kids series.

Currently, the franchise is owned by Seagrounds Financial Group, who acquired the series in 2014 after distributor Alfred Haber Distribution Co. wrote the series off for tax purposes.

Synopsis
Darren, an anthropomorphic mole miner, works the mines in a mineral-rich region alongside other moles and at the same time teaches the audience middle-school-level knowledge about geology, engineering, history of mining, and industrial uses of different minerals.

Production
Creator Phelan Morkel was only a high schooler when his comic Darren the Mole Miner was featured in the school paper of in  in 1996. The comic gained national attention for it's teaching of geology and the history of mining and Morkel soon signed a deal with to release collections of the comic. In 1999, Morkel was approached by to produce a television series adapted from the comic. Lear and Morkel pitched the series to in 2000. Executives from the broadcaster immediately greenlit the series for a initial season of 20 episodes.

Lear's Act III Productions worked with -based Jazz Television Media (a division of the Asheville-based advertising agency HRV Advertising, who made donations for funding PBS programming through their charitable arm The Harry R. Voskanyan Foundation) to produce the series, and hired the Japanese company to produce the animation for the series and the -based  to provide the voice recording and casting.

Morkel originally wanted the series to run for 5 seasons, but the series ended up running for 7 seasons and 119 episodes due to it's popularity with PBS member stations. One of the changes that came about with the "uncancellation" of the series was a change in animation studio, as Group TAC was replaced with for seasons 6 and 7. According to Phelan Morkel, the -based P.A.Works was found to be much cheaper than the -based Group TAC by the producers at Act III and Jazz Television Media.

Cast

 * (seasons 1-5), Enyu Ni (seasons 6-7) as Darren, a mole miner
 * as Philippe, the manager of the mines