Bugs (TV series)

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Bugs
Genre Action drama
Running time 48 minutes
Creator(s) Brian Eastman
Stuart Doughty
Starring Jaye Griffiths
Craig McLachlan
Jesse Birdsall
Jan Harvey
Paula Hunt
Steven Houghton
Country of origin United Kingdom
Original channel BBC One
Original run April 1, 1995–
28 August 1999
No. of episodes 40

Bugs was a British television drama series which ran for four seasons from April 1995 to August 1999. It was originally broadcast on Saturday evenings on BBC One, and was produced for the BBC by the independent production company Carnival Films.

The series was devised by Carnival boss Brian Eastman and producer Stuart Doughty with input from veteran writer-producer Brian Clemens, who had previously worked on The Avengers. Clemens described Bugs as "an Avengers for the 1990s". Other notable series writers included Colin Brake and Stephen Gallagher. Two episodes (Bugged Wheat, Hollow Man), were written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who went on to create the series Smallville.

The programme was a mixture of action/adventure and science-fiction, with a reliance on fast-paced plots, technical gadgetry, stunts and explosions. Much of the programme's filming took place around the London Docklands area, which had recently been redeveloped with projects such as Canary Wharf. This was intended to give a modern, and perhaps even slightly futuristic, feel to locations of the episodes.

The plot of the programme involved a team of specialist independent crime-fighting technology experts, who faced a variety of threats based around computers and other modern technology. The main trio of regulars were Nick Beckett (Jesse Birdsall), Ros Henderson (Jaye Griffiths) and Ed (Craig McLachlan in seasons one to three, Steven Houghton in season four). From series three, they worked with government department the Bureau of Weapons (an organisation featured in the previous two seasons and decimated in the second season finale) renamed Bureau 2, whose head was codenamed Jan (Jan Harvey) and her secretary, Alex (Paula Hunt). The series evolved, as a result, from a series of relatively unconnected one-off episodes to an over-arching 'soap opera' complete with office romances.

The programme came close to cancellation at the conclusion of its third season, but due to an exciting cliffhanger ending deliberately included by the production team, and strong foreign sales, a fourth was commissioned. The final season suffered from being moved to an earlier timeslot on Saturday evenings, and for only having the first eight of its produced ten episodes scheduled for broadcast [1] Coupled with the Omagh Bombing forcing the BBC to postpone the series for a week, this meant that the concluding three episodes would not be broadcast until a year later. Another attempt to save the show by giving the season a cliffhanger ending was not successful, and the ending of the final episode — as Ros and Beckett are abducted by an attacker unseen by the audience but recognised by Beckett — was never resolved.

The series has something of a minor cult following in the UK, not least for glaring production faults - for example in the first episode the cast are quite clearly stepping onto pre-chalked outlines to aid what was presumeably a necessarily short external shot.

Overall forty episodes were produced, ten in each of the four seasons. Virgin Publishing produced novelisations of the episodes of the first season, but these were not successful and subsequent episodes were not novelised. As of 2005, the series is available on DVD in season-by-season box set form, released by Revelation Films. A complete box set collection of all four seasons is also available.


Contents

[edit] References to The Avengers

Bugs contains several references to 1960s cult series and Brian Clemens' masterpiece, The Avengers. Here are some examples :

  • The colour of Beckett's Jeep Cherokee is British racing green, the same green as the various Bentley John Steed used to drive in The Avengers. It may also be a reference to the cult series that the car Ros drives in "Out of the Hive" (Season 1, Episode 1) is a Peugeot 205 Vauxhall, as Steed drove a Vauxhall Motors 30/98 E-Type car in two episodes of The Avengers.
  • In "Down Among the Dead Men" (Season 1, Episode 4), Beckett keeps correcting Ed who speaks of boats instead of ships. John Steed also explained the difference between boats and ships to Tara King in the The Avengers episode "Game".
  • In "Shotgun Wedding" (Season 1, Episode 5), Ros is seen rather badly sewing a fake button on Ed's leather jacket, while at the end of the episode Ed resews the button with remarkable skill. Back in the 1960s, John Steed marvelled on Emma Peel's ability to sew in the The Avengers episode "Escape In Time". This is a sign of social change : in the 1960s, Emma was a modern woman who was not expected to sew, but in the 1990s, things have become more complicated: Ros is the modern woman who is not expected to sew - and can't, and Ed is the modern man who is not expected to sew, but can anyway.
  • In "Bugged Wheat" (Season 2, Episode 3), the Bugs team encounters Nathan Pym, a villain with a pronunciation problem who wants to decimate wheat with a pest. In the Avengers episode "The Rotters", John Steed chatted with another Mr. Pym, who kept using meaningless words in his sentences; the episode was about villains wanting to destroy the country with dry rot.

[edit] Trivia

  • The production was originally based at two warehouses of Blackwall Basin, on the Isle of Dogs in London. After the IRA bombing of the South Park Plaza, the crew had to travel further to find intact buildings for exterior locations. [2]

[edit] Quotes

  • Ed : "And they say video games aren't any good for you !"
  • Ros : "My lovely car."
  • Jean-Daniel : "Women are sheep."

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Original announcement of BUGs season four's eight episode run on the Official BUGs website [1]
  2. ^ SFX Magazine, May 1996, p. 51.
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