COLIN BRAKE - ALL UNDER CONTROL

It is a setting as far from one you might see in Bugs as you could imagine. Colin Brake, script consultant for the series, sits at a table in a crowded, smoky London pub, sipping a pint of bitter. It almost seems inappropriate to be talking about a series that is clean-cut, glossy and hi-tech in such surroundings. Colin, too, is distinctly un-Bugs. An unassuming man, dressed in a battered trenchcoat, which hides a smart waistcoat,, and a weathered hat. In this highly populated, very mundane place, Colin chats about Bugs, his thoughts on the series and his role in it.

Just like the series' three main stars (Craig McLachlan as Ed, Jaye Griffiths as Ros, and Jesse Birdsall as Beckett), Colin has a history in soaps, having worked on BBC's EastEnders as a script editor and writer before becoming freelance. How did he make the leap from Albert Square to London's Docklands? "I got involved with Bugs because of that rare thing - my agent got me the job. I had been script editor at the BBC for a long time; I did work on EastEnders and Trainer, and then I was just looking for writing jobs. With a colleague, I submitted a Fantasy idea to Carnival Films [the production company behind Bugs], so they were aware of me. And then when Bugs was starting, they were looking for someone to come in and do some script doctoring, somebody tame and malleable. They spoke to my agent, and my agent said, 'Talk to Colin'. Two days later I was working on it.

Colin describes his role on the programme: "I am what is normally know as the script editor. With the co-producer Stuart Doughty, I am responsible for getting the scripts in the shape required for production. Basically, that means I'm stuck in a portacabin for five months of the year, chained to a typewriter doing rewrites as necessary."

DIFFICULT

Bugs, with its very definite style and flavour, seems to cause a lot of problems for writers. Colin comments, "It is a very difficult show to get right. In part, it's because there is nothing like it on British television and it's not the kind of television we make in the country very often, therefore writers aren't used to writing action adventure. They are writing stuff that is character drama or social realism, or issue-driven drama. They're not really used to villains and plots and things going bang every ten minutes. There are some writers out there who are familiar with the genre, but they're either hugely successful and too busy to do something like Bugs, or not experienced enough in working in television to produce scripts ready for production. They've got the ideas, but not the experience. And it's a very difficult show to get experience of: there's no time to learn."

Colin speaks from experience as a writer of the series. In the first season, he was responsible for the episode Sporting Chance, a story about the abuse of drugs in sport. In typical Bugs fashion, though, these drugs were the kind of super serums that a certain shield-wielding American superhero is very familiar with. How did Colin, on top of his editing work, get the chance to write this episode? "I cam in just after they had got the first script ready, that was Assassins Inc [the second transmitted episode]. I then worked on preparing the script for All Under Control, then Hot Metal, and then we did the first one, Out of the Hive. After all that, they said, 'Would you like to write one?' Come January, when we had the other scripts ready, I was able to slip off and write Sporting Chance." In the gap between seasons, Colin found the time to pen the spectacular two-part opener for Season Two, What Goes Up… and …Must Come Down.

In this, intrepid Ed is sent into orbit to launch a geological satellite that could save the economy of an impoverished island in the South Seas. On this mission, the shuttle he is co-piloting comes under attack from a laser-based orbital defence system, Star-Shield, which is being controlled by a traitor back on Earth.

SHOW DEVELOPMENT

With its slightly dubious science, this marks the beginning of a series that promises ideas that are even further off-the-wall than those that heralded the programme's style last year. Colin says this is an intentional move to develop the show. "I think we're slightly more outrageous in the stories we are doing this series, sort of pushing the envelope and having some fun. A few more pure SF ideas are slipping in. It's a bit of a subversive show," he opines. "It's a BBC1 show on Saturday nights - it wouldn't be there if it was actually labelled Science Fiction. It only gets away with it by being action adventure. But it's much more borderline than it was before."

This isn't the only change in the new series. When they were conceived, it was decided that Bugs' three leads would be very simple heroes. Their characters would be more or less defined by their abilities, and they wouldn't be hampered by deep backgrounds or twisted psyches. This year, however, the production team are pushing the characters a little further. "I think we were all more confident about what we were doing. We now know what Bugs is, what the Bugs world is, and what we can get away with. The characters now are firmly established. We know what they can do, we know what the actors can bring to it. That's one of the reasons that writers find it hard," he explains. "Writers in this country are used to dealing with characters with huge histories and a psychological background that pushes them towards certain actions. Our characters don't: they are action heroes, they do things. All three actors have now found the right level to play them at. It's not a comical level, they play it at a level or realism that works for them."

"In the second series, we've slipped in 'humanity moments' to give them a little more depth as characters. And the three actors are now so comfortable playing off each other that it really works. It's a different kind of acting, what Brian Eastman calls 'genre acting'. It's probably an American style of acting, which is much more playing the moment rather than the theatrical tradition that we have."

THIRD SERIES

In about five months, filming will commence on the third series. What are the team's plan for that? "We've only just today started talking about where we might go with Series Three. The important thing is to build on what we've got. You don't want to change anything that works, and hopefully Series Two is going to build on the first series and be a success. what we have introduced in Series Two is an ongoing series arc; in Straczynski/Chris Carter fashion. I'm sure we'll be looking to do something similar with a third series." Although it is a long way off, it is clear that Colin has given some consideration to the programme's future beyond the third series. "Hopefully, if the series is a success, we willl be around for a couple of years more. I don't know the position of the three leads, but I think that by the end of thirty episodes we'll have a very strong formula where we will be able to accommodate, perhaps, actor changes. If Jesse or Jaye or Craig want to move on, I'm sure we can replace them with new characters, who could become part of the team and take us into new adventures. It's a bit like a Tomorrow People franchise, where you can bring in new people." Before consigning any of the current leads to speculative unemployment, Colin adds, "I don't think we've finished with the three we've got, and hopefully they will carry on doing it."

TELEFANTASY AIM

What is obvious about Colin is not only his love for Bugs, but his love for the genre of telefantasy as a whole. Would he describe his job on Bugs as a dream come true? "Absolutely. It was a twist of fate that made BBC cancel Doctor Who before I could become script editor. I spent a long time angling to become Andrew Cartmel's replacement and the bastards just cancelled the series," he laughs. "This is the first chance I've had to really work on the kind of television programme I wanted to work on. I enjoyed my time on EastEnders, I'm very fond of EastEnders and the opportunities it gave me. But this is the sort of stuff that I grew up watching, and I love it."