While I have to confess that Chocolate Underground did improve during its final few episodes, I still stand firmly behind my thought that the show suffered from its short running time, as most episodes struggled to find the time to build up any momentum and make its major political points in a precise enough way. This really detracted from my enjoyment of the series as a whole, and actually quite often left the truly important message of the series out in the cold in favour of a more simplistic "Yay for sweet things!" world-view, which I felt was never the point of the show in the first place.
In the end, I really think that Chocolate Underground would have benefited from a place as a 'normal' series, with twenty minute episodes and everything else that entails. In its short running format seen here, it never became more than a short distraction.