|
By
FRANK BEHRENS
Can a series seriously bomb
each week and still be a big hit? It happened in
1979 when British TV viewers were treated to
"Danger UXB." Each of the 13 episodes was
concerned with Lt. Brian Ash (Anthony Andrews) who
is posted to a squadron responsible for defusing
and removing unexploded bombs (UXBs) scattered all
over London and a good deal of the rest of
England. Now that it is all available in a boxed
set of four A&E DVDs, you can see for yourself how
intelligently the story is told.
Practical matters first: You must have at least
one bomb per episode and the problems involved
must vary from all the ones in the past episodes.
So the first one is in the ground, the second in a
wall high off the ground. Another is of a new
type, yet another will be defused using a new
invention, the next is not a bomb but a land
torpedo. And since Andrews is the lead character,
you know he cannot be killed until the last
episode, if indeed he does even then. So the
suspense -- and there is a frightful amount of it
-- is wondering which of the supporting cast will
be blown to pieces or just how Andrews will defuse
this one.
Still practical, we cannot have each 50-minute
episode concerned entirely with defusing UXBs.
There must be a love interest -- and the one
between Andrews and Judy Geeson is a fairly
interesting one. She plays Susan, daughter of the
scientist (Iain Cuthbertson) who's working on ways
to defuse UXBs more safely. There must be lots of
supporting colorful characters in the squad and at
least one of them must have his own love affair
(just as in a musical comedy, I am afraid). And so
on. But without all this, the entire series would
be a mere documentary and lose a good deal of its
appeal.
Yes, there is padding during the nearly 11-hour
running time; but the acting is superb, the
recreation of bombed out areas totally convincing,
and the nitty-gritty of first sending in the
"sappers" to dig around the bomb and then having
the hero going it alone to finish the job is (I
take it) extremely accurate. Special mention must
be made of Maurice Roeves as Sgt. James, the
epitome of the British no-nonsense but very human
underneath three-striper.
You really shouldn't miss this one. There is a
History Channel documentary on the last disc
called "Bomb Squad" that is not nearly as well
done as the mini-series. |
