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A few years back, an insane tune that went something like this: "Dum, dee dum - dee dum, dee dum, dee dum" would send scores of Pink Panther fans rushing for the TV set and the best armchair in the front room.

The theme tune would ring in your head for the rest of the weekend. It's one of those jingles that just gets inside your brain and won't go away. The plots were always totally daft - featuring the bungling Inspector Clouseau and the Panther in an ever more ridiculous series of disasters.

The farcical storylines didn't make any difference to the show's popularity. What people tuned in for was to see that wacky pink panther and his marvellous car. It was the characters rather than the plots that made the show.

Either way, Gremlin and Magic Bytes will be hoping that the launch of the computer game will bring hordes of Panther fans out of the woodwork with fivers in their hands.

The plot of the game is very much in the tradition of the TV show. The gentleman panther has fallen on hard times due to living the high life without any income. He is forced to take a job as a butler in a millionaire's mansion. Just the thing for our light-fingered hero. "I'll be able to nick all the valuables and set myself up in an island paradise" thinks the rinky dink Panther.

What he hasn't reckoned on is that his boss has a serious sleep-walking habit. This makes the job of relieving him of his valuables all the more difficult as, if you are not careful, he is likely to bump into something, wake himself up, and catch you red-handed - or pink-handed even.

There is a way around this though. You can gently guide your boss around obstacles or keep him walking up and down in straight lines where he will come to no harm.

The instructions actually suggest that you guide him around the house with you. I found this extremely hard to do because turning him in tight corners and guiding him upstairs is very tricky.

Before the Panther gets anywhere near a mansion, he must go to the Butler's Agency. They will ask him if he has a top hat fit for the job and if he doesn't he'll be dispatched to the shop to buy one.

This part of the game is decidedly tedious. It would have been better if you could just start off in the mansion and get straight on with the business of nicking all the valuables.

It is particularly annoying to have to go through this rigmarole every time the old codger bumps into something.

To avoid this happening, the Panther does have a number of items at his disposal that he can use to guide his boss. There is a board that can be used to make him jump over awkward obstacles, a bell which you can ring to make him change directions, and a number of inflatables. These blow-up people (Stop sniggering at the back there) - in the shape of a burglar to act as a decoy and another blow up Panther that can be posted by walls to give the old fellow a shove in the right direction if he looks like crashing into something.

The clever way to play Pink Panther is to place these items around the mansion as quickly as possible. But you really will have to be clever to do this, as selecting them and activating the objects involves a number of joystick/key-pressing manoeuvres. As in a complex beat-'em-up game - it ain't easy.

A moneybag fills up like an egg timer every time the Panther nicks something. When the money bag is completely full you can tackle the next mansion. There are four mansions in total before the Pink Panther can get to the island of his dreams. Items nicked are also displayed in points to the right of the moneybag.

There are a couple of serious design faults that let the Pink Panther game down. The first and worst of these is the 'start new game' sequence. There is about a 40 second wait between losing one challenge in the mansion and starting your next.

Gripe number two is with the music. In an earlier Amiga demo, the music soundtrack featured the famous 'dum, dee dum' piece. This was sadly missing from the ST version that I tested.

On the plus side, Magic Bytes made an excellent job of the two characters themselves. The Pink Panther's characteristic sloping walk has been nicely reproduced - and Clouseau is also convincing right down to his hunched back and shabby raincoat.

Magic Bytes is a German company relatively new to the UK scene. Some gamers may remember them for the excellent Western Games with its astonishing graphics.

Their new association with Gremlin hopefully help them introduce a degree of extra playability into their games. Pink Panther would certainly have benefited from that. A game for ardent Pink Panther fans only.