ON LOCATION - THE FINAL DAY

BUGS - SEASON TWO

It is the last day of filming the second series of Bugs and there's a mixture of tiredness and relief on the faces of the production crew. Each of the 10 50-minute episode takes 12 days to film, which means it's been a long haul, but a good one. "It's a sad day, and yet a completely good day at the same time," say actress Jaye Griffiths, who plays Ros. "It feels like the end of term." Bugs looks like no other programme on television, with its bright colours, hi-tech sets and modern architecture. Much of the style of the show can be attributed to filming on location in London's Docklands, where the Bugs team have set up base in an almost-impossible-to-find warehouse. It's a massive building which has been filled with various sets ranging from Ros's home (which the crew have nicknamed 'Gizmos'), to computer rooms and a small replica of the snowy Arctic. It's far more flexible than using a traditional studio. There's so much more room, for one thing, and they can build lots of sets and leave them standing for as long as they need them, without having to worry about taking up expensive studio space. There is a down side, of course: that there are no ready-made facilities like lighting rigs or sound proofing. The sound is a particular problem and leads to a lot of post-production dubbing.

"We've shot a lot more of the second series inside that the first series," explains co-producer Stuart Doughty. "We've done far more set building this time around than the first series. We've built the space shuttle in here, we've built a vertical takeoff aircraft, a particle accelerator here and lots of other things as well. And we've got a good space here. About 60 of the show is shot inside our base."

Jaye Griffiths is the centre of attention on one of the sets, sitting on a black reclining chair in bright hi-tech office. Set out on the table in front of her is a collection of colour marbles and clear perspex blocks. For the scene she is rehearsing, she uses one of the perspex blocks to destroy a bugging device by bringing it down on top of the bug and crushing it. Before she does so, the director warns everyone that there will be a big bang

SMASHING SUCCESS

And sure enough, Jaye smashes it with such relish that it's louder than anyone expected, and sends the coloured marbles jumping out of their holes and rolling all over the place. After this quick scene is filmed, someone passes among the crew with a bag of doughnuts, which are soon snapped up by everyone on set, including Jaye Griffiths. She takes one bite and jam oozes out, dripping onto the reclining char she is sitting in. The assistant director calls for an anti-jam device, but fortunately all that's needed is a quick wipe with one of the make-up department's tissues. After that scene, Jaye returns to her trailer where she changes into a robe, makes some phone calls and looks over her scenes for the afternoon. She reflects that the second series has been much less pressurised. "The three of us are much more relaxed, I think, and that shows on a screen. It's been fun, I think they're better storylines, especially the first two and the last two. "But maybe that's not true, maybe we're just more familiar with them so they sit easier. I mean when we first got the scripts [in the first year], we thought, 'well this is impossible, I can't talk this techno-speak!' But 20 episodes later, it's rather old hat and 'homey'. I think that's what was so difficult about last year, that you just had no comprehension. I want to speak to Pierce Brosnan and ask what it was like for him when he did Bond.

There's so little dialogue. It's visually driven and the scenes that you're not in - if there's not much dialogue - you can't quite ties it up in your head. You can this series because you know what it's going to look like, but last year it was all a bit Twilight Zone-ish."

Ask Jaye Griffiths to name the best episodes of this year and she has to confess that the whole experience has started to blur into one. "To be perfectly honest, you'd have to remind me about each episode because I don't remember. If you tell me what costume I was in I might remember. We did one with a dog, that was lovely. It was called Newton's Run. It's about a dog with a computer chip inside him who gets kidnapped. That was great because we had a lovely little dog called Sparky, she was gorgeous. And the Space one was great because that was not like anything we did last year." She leans forward in her chair and whisper in reference to the doughnut she had earlier on: "and I was a lot thinner! Too many location lunches and teas and sitting on my bum."

The conversation is interrupted by a man who knocks on the door to Jaye's trailer and brings in several bottles of champagne. "See how we're looked after?" she says as she invites the man in, who it turns out is called Charley. "Apparently he put out smoked salmon and oysters for the wardrobe department this morning. Charley looks after the wardrobe truck. That's the kind of people you're working with."

Jaye pays Charley for the booze, which she ordered for their end of term lunch. "I don't actually have any dialogue this afternoon, so I'm going to have a drink because I'm that unprofessional!" she jokes.

ARCTIC

Back in the warehouse, a small corner has been turned into the Arctic. It's for a scene where Beckett, played by Jesse Birdsall, contacts a group of scientists who've been exiled to the snowy plains. The finished film will only be an insert on a television monitor, so it's a minimalist set consisting of a tent, a satellite receiver, and a lot of fake snow. Not surprisingly, it is the snow that causes the biggest problems. It looks like confetti and is designed to fall from holes in a metal container which is suspended from the ceiling. Although the contraption works adequately, it only produces a light shower that doesn't look very much like snow. The director looks sceptically at his video monitor and asks if it's possible to make it snow faster. The crew try adapting the snow machine, but it makes very little difference, and they decide to improvise. They get hold of a wind machine and a bag of fake snow and turn the fan towards the Arctic set, where it blows a much more convincing flurry of fake snow across the actors. The director is satisfied and the scene is filmed. The two actors, who are supposed to be stranded in the arctic, shiver as they deliver their dialogue, trying to look cold in their coats, hats and gloves under hot filming lights on a mild day in late March. Jesse Birdsall helps them out by standing behind the camera and reading his share of the dialogue from the script.

UMBRELLA POWER

It's ironic that only a couple of months earlier, real snow had covered Britain. The producers insist that London tends to escape the most severe weather and their filming schedule wasn't disrupted, but perhaps that's because it would take a near-disaster to call a halt to the filming. "Weather covers is 'take an umbrella'," says Jaye Griffiths. "It's just tough, you're going to get wet. There isn't the room in the schedule to worry about it; if it rains, it rains. You just hope it doesn't. We did one night where there was thick fog and you couldn't see beyond two foot. That really screwed everything, which was a real shame. That sequence was like nothing that was planned. We were supposed to be shooting at this building opposite - well, you couldn't see the building!" It wasn't the only occasion when things went wrong. "Only every day!" she says. "Things go wrong because we're people and not machines, so it's a catalogue of what you do wrong. Today I said 'Bed and Eckett' instead of 'Ed and Beckett'. That happens every minute of every day. Or you get to do a stunt and the art department build the set and the truck's different and it doesn't fit in the set doors! That happened! And you think, 'Ah, right, well, cut that then' and you just have to adapt. That's the same for every programme, it's not specific to ours; it's just that we do more action stuff so there's more opportunity for cock-ups."

FINGERS CROSSED

The afternoon of the last filming day is not the most appropriate time for cock-ups and everyone has their fingers crossed that things will go smoothly. There is so much stuff to do that the crew has splits into two, allowing two different section to be filmed at the same time. The second unit is filming a sequence where Beckett disconnects a bomb. The director, Brian Farnham, comes over and discusses what he want before leaving them to get on with it while he works on another scene at the other end of the warehouse.

For the scene, actor Jesse Birdsall needs a pair of pliers and is informed by one of the crew that Clive has them. This doesn't seem to help him very much as he comments: "Why has he got them? And who is Clive anyway?!"

MISSING TEAM MEMBER

Unfortunately there is not an opportunity to watch Jesse on set with the third member of the Bugs team, Craig McLachlan who plays Ed. He finished his stint several days before and has gone back to his home country of Australia. It's a shame because watching those two together is said to be one of the highlights of being on the Bugs set. "They're like a double act, they're hilarious," says Jaye Griffiths. "You can always go to them because they will always make you laugh. Even when it's been really horrible, standing at two o'clock in the morning in the middle of some bloody waste tip, on top of a tanker, getting wet, seriously miserable, Craig will do something stupid and make you laugh. We're isolated here, you don't see any other people, you don't see strangers walking past, we just see the same faces day in day out and sometimes that's not good because it's too insular. But most of the time you get out of the car in the morning and everyone says, 'Oh hi, morning, how you doin?' or 'God, wasn't yesterday bad?' or 'Wasn't yesterday good?'. We walked on set the other day and the art department had built this set like you would not believe. It was phenomenal, it was huge and it just looked gorgeous and you can feel the whole unit going 'wow'. Then Chris Howards [the Director of Photography] and the 'sparks' lit it beautifully and it was a joy to work on."

Jesse Birdsall, however, doesn't seem to be having much fun on the set. The filming order has been changed and the action sequences are being shot before the dialogue section. As he sits waiting for the next shot, he remarks that he can feel the complicated technical speech he learnt starting to slip out of his head.

LOOKING AHEAD

Looking much more relaxed is the location manager, who's on set having completed his job for the year. As he chats with other members of the crew he reveals he has already started to think about locations for the third series which begins filming in October. He has a tough job ahead of him because the Bugs team have filmed at virtually every building in Docklands. They have even re-used several building from different angles for the second series, and filmed one episode at the headquarters of Channel 4. Looking further afield for locations is almost unthinkable, because much of the style of the show comes from filming in Docklands.

"It's full of post-modern architecture like nowhere else in Britain," says co-producer Stuart Doughty. "That's the reason we're in Docklands and near the interesting Docklands Light Railway which features in episodes. It looks different, it doesn't look like British Rail, it looks vaguely foreign, international, universal, which is the whole idea of the series. You aren't supposed to say, 'Oh yes that's London, the number 49 bus goes down there, I work just around the corner and my Granny lives just up the street there'. The idea is to set the show in a not-real place, or a place that could be anywhere, but is in fact nowhere in particular. We never use real names in the series or real places or real people, and Docklands has that kind of unreal air about it."

There is a feeling among the production crew that the second year of Bugs has been better than the first. "Now that we know that it works in the format it's been given, there's a lot more experimentation with the baddies and things," says Jaye. "We have our own Moriarty now, who Jean-Daniel played by Gareth Marks. He's a recurrent theme, so that's good. That adds another dimension."

NOT SCIENCE FICTION

"As with anything, the more you do the more experience you get," adds Stuart. "Perhaps we know how to do it a bit better and know what you can do and ways of doing things. We've built on our experience of the first series. The stories are a bit bolder and we go into space in the first two episodes; we've got a story in the air in the last two episodes which is about an artificial intelligence which takes over human minds, which is sort of Science Fiction, really. We aren't a Science Fiction series, but we have pushed the science more than in the first series and we've sort of used a bit of Science Fiction here and there as well. The story in the last two is a reverse of what is really happening in computer technology at the moment. There have been experiments using brain power or mind waves to control the cursor on a computer screen and we've reversed that so that computers can control minds."

The final scene of that episode is also the final scene of the series and one of the last ones to be filmed. It sees Ros ready to leave home and packing her bag. The scene is set up with the help of Jaye Griffiths' stand-in who has similar long black hair and who is wearing similar colours to Jaye's costume. Once the technical aspects are worked out, Jaye changes into her costume and arrives on set. The director want the scene to be quite long because of other elements he has to fit in, and asks Jaye to take her time. She suggests picking up an apple from the fruit bowl on the table and putting it in her bag to add a few extra seconds. The director is in favour of her suggestion and the apple is duly packed.

People often assume this sort of work is glamorous, but Jaye Griffiths says that's far from the truth. "They forget you have to make it, they forget that 50 minutes takes twelve days, a 12-hour day minimum and that's just the reality of the situation. They think you have an easy life and you think, 'Well you come down here every day for six months, a six-day week, 12 hours a day, freezing cold, you get up in the dark, you go to bed in the dark, you never see your family, you never see your friends, if you do get a day off you're so knackered anyway that you sit down and watch videos, you have to learn your lines, and you have to speak gobbledegook - see how you do'. I mean - Jesus! - it's not like you go down a mine for crying out load, but no, it's not glamorous. It's knackering. The glamorous bit is afterwards. It's when it's finished and out, that's the nice bit - if people like it, of course. If they tell you you're crap all the time, that's not so great."

ACTION

However, she does get to take part in far more action sequences than most tv actors and likens starring in Bugs to making a mini-Bond movie every twelve days. It follows that she has no wish to see the scripts delve deeper into her character. "It's not he genre for that," she says. "There's just a hint of things, you never see them at home doing the washing up, they never go to the park, they never go to the loo. This isn't a character series, this is an action series and we go around saving London. And there are moments where we either joke together or get on each others nerves or show concern, but it's not about 'And what did you do last night?'. There isn't the room and it would detract."

As she approaches the light at the end of the tunnel and members of the crew prepare to leave the warehouse that's been home for six months, does anything stick out from making the second series of Bugs? "You remember laughing," she says. "And being cold and wet. And laughing. And getting up early and laughing. And some days being truly horrible… and laughing."