Danger Mouse and his sidekick Penfold will be returning to British TV screens in 2015, but some of their fellow characters will have changed gender.

“Characters that might have been male in the past will now be female characters,” said CBBC controller Cheryl Taylor, speaking at the Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield.

The BBC is co-producing 52 new episodes of the iconic cartoon with FremantleMedia, with original co-creator Brian Cosgrove acting as a consultant for the remake.

“We felt that the redesign stayed truthful both to the essence of Danger Mouse as we knew and loved him, but also brought something new for the youth of today,” said Taylor.

“Having seen the scripts, which are really whizz-bang, they’ve managed to retain that fantastic rather old-fashioned British humour as well as bringing something fresh.”

Appearing in the same panel session, CBeebies controller Kay Benbow talked about the BBC's wider efforts to make women more prominent in its children's shows.

"I still feel the default tendency is for there to be a male lead or a male presenter. It's actually really hard: you can easily say Mr Maker, Mr Tumble, Mr Bloom. It's harder for women: what do you say: Mrs, Miss or Ms? It's a bit of a drag really, we're still defined by our marital status," said Benbow.

However, she said the BBC wants to launch more shows with women not just starring, but with their names in the titles.

CBeebies also now has more women providing voice narration for its animated series. "It's an ongoing thing, and I do feel it's my responsibility to keep asking those questions," she said.

Danger Mouse is one of several vintage children’s TV shows being revived by the BBC, with Teletubbies and Clangers due to return on the broadcaster’s CBeebies channel.

“Teletubbies I knew would make the headlines. It’s an iconic series, it’s always been associated with the BBC, and a great show is a great show. A good idea is a good idea whenever it is,” said Benbow.

“The series was made in 4:3, not HD. There would have come a point where we couldn’t continue running it… I’ll be honest, it took quite a bit of persuading because I wanted to see and be confident that it would be the right thing to do.”

Benbow also enthused about the return of Clangers. “If I’m really honest Clangers was one of my favourite shows as a child. I loved it,” she said.

“Again, that pitch was something new, something different… It was just a brilliant pitch, and it looks beautiful. I was on set last week and it’s looking stunning.”

Taylor talked about CBBC's ambitions for Horrible Histories, the hugely popular comedy/history show that has so far run for five series. “We are doing more Horrible Histories down the track, but it’s not this year,” she said.

“It’s obviously a brand that the audience adore. Possibly more than any other show on the channel it manages to sit in two different genres. You can call it absolutely a comedy, because it’s so damn funny, but you can also call it factual.”

CBBC is in talks with producer Lion Television about plans for more Horrible Histories shows. “We’re just looking at how that might evolve, possibly with new editions and new people. We just wanted to continue to the conversation," she said.

CBeebies and CBBC are collaborating on some projects in an effort to smooth the migration of children from the former to latter, as they grow older. So far, that has included a game, Fly High and Huggies, available on both channels' websites.

"Over the next 18 months we're looking at doing two or three drama co-commissions which we hope will give us a sense, without of rocking the boat, of whether that's an appropriate way to handle that migration," said Taylor.

"It's not just about television. In five or 10 years time, the role of the iPlayer, being able to make your own playlists, will make all this considerably easier," said colleague Joe Godwin, director of BBC Children's.

"We know some teenagers watch CBeebies, even. When you can build your own playlist, and nobody has to know what channel you're watching, that fluidity will be much easier for people to do."

More CBBC shows will be premiered on iPlayer before they air on TV in the future, following recent experiments with making episodes of Hank Zipzer available on iPlayer the week before they aired on TV.

"I think it won't be long before the notion that it has to be on the telly and then on iPlayer, and if you want to premiere on iPlayer that's a big special deal. I think that's going to end," said Godwin.

"For this audience, we have to try and put things on the platforms they want, when they want them." He noted that the BBC has recently launched dedicated versions of iPlayer for CBeebies and CBBC, while features in the works for the main iPlayer will also benefit children's shows.

"New iterations of iPlayer will bring more and more iterations of playlisting, where you can build your own stacks of stuff," he said.

CBBC has been experimenting with "playalong" apps for shows including Ludus and Horrible History Gory Games in 2014, with children able to answer questions alongside the on-screen contestants.

"I think the play-along was a risk, they were bold decisions, they took a lot of hard work. Right up to a few weeks before tx of the actual programmes we didn't necessarily know if the playalong was going to work," said Taylor.

"It all did, thanks to some fantastic people working very long hours. We were thinking possibly 6% of the audience if they were playing along at home, that would be a good measure of success. But with Gory Games it was 15%, and for Ludus it was between 10% and 15%."

Godwin added that a third of the audience for Ludus downloaded its iOS and Android app, which has now passed 100,000 downloads.

CBeebies is preparing to launch its second smartphone and tablet app later this year, added Benbow, who said it will have more of an emphasis on storytelling than the games-focused CBeebies PlayTime app.

Has the BBC considered doing anything around Minecraft, the game that has a huge audience among British children both playing it and watching videos from YouTube channels like Stampy? Or does the BBC's public-service status mean it can't get involved in this particular kids' cultural trend?

"Because its a commercial, and an increasingly complex commercial thing, it's hard to cover it like we'd cover something like, say, Wimbledon," said Godwin, who said he too is fascinated by Minecraft fan-culture on YouTube.

"The interesting thing is the phenomena and the attraction of it, and being able to reflect the fact that our audience – well, parts of our audience – are obsessed with it."

"We get a lot of people [independent producers] coming in and saying 'we're talking to Minecraft' so it'll be interesting to see what those talks result in," added Taylor.

• YouTube, apps and Minecraft: digital kids and children’s media