It's funny how often you hear 'a shadow of its former self' bandied around about cult television series. Doctor Who, The Avengers, Blake's 7 - all of these suffered this slander when it came to their later years. But I bet you've never heard the early years of a cult series described as a shadow of its latter self. Well, you're about to.
As one of the half dozen fans of bugs still left in this country, I was admittedly looking forward to Season Three. When it returned to our screens this summer, I was a little bit taken aback. Where were the gaudy colours, the simple lines, the empty streets, the action-driven stories? Gone, it seemed, replaced by something entirely different. 'Replaced' is probably the wrong word: the changes to this series of Bugs grew naturally out of what Bugs had always been about, nurtured by a production team concerned that their original formula had stopped working. This new Bugs was a little darker, a little more real, but still as much fun as ever - if not more so.
It began with Blaze of Glory, a story about a villain with a motive - the first indication that something was afoot in the old Bugs camp. No longer was it enough for a bad guy to want to take of the world because it was a laugh. Leslie Ash as Kitty McHaig brought us a character who wanted revenge on her father for her unfair treatment at his hands. Admittedly, Ash wsa a little less than 100% convincing, and her character was not over-endowed with sanity, but the change in attitude towards the stories the series told was remarkable. Suddenly, action for action's sake was out of the window, and character-led drama was the order of the day.
And here was something that caused immediate concern. How were the old wooden-tops (Jaye Griffiths as Ros Henderson, Jesse Birdsall as Nick Beckett and Craig McLachlan as Ed) going to cope with playing real roles instead of the two-dimensional superheroes of series past? Quite well, it turned out. Griffiths made a passable stab at pretending to be real, while Birdsall showed that his stint on Eldorado was no fluke - he really can't act very well at all. The real surprise was McLachlan, who put in a great turn consistently throughout the season. Who would have thought an ex-Aussie soap star could manage that?
The regulars were supplemented by the addition of two new characters. Jan Harvey played the code-named Jan, the head of the team's operations, and she was joined by Paula Hunt as Alex, the real gem of the new-look Bugs. It's nothing new to have a spunky young woman in a series, but the diminutive, unthreatening Hunt put her all into her role and shone week after week. The innocence of this unselfconsciously brainy tearaway as she ripped into each new villain was one of the most entertaining things about the season. Her inclusion was a stroke of genius.
But what of the stories? With the odd duff exception, they were really rather good, and there were some true stand-outs. The second episode (a second part, in a way, to the premiere), The Revenge Effect, was an even bigger surprise than the first. All the technological trappings of the series were stripped away as a kidnapped Ed was left to fend for himself in an isolated country house. He was being stalked by an even more crazed Leslie Ash (getting better by this point), who wielded an unfeasibly large gun. Lots of running, lots of explosions and lots of tension. Fugitive, in which Ros is taken into custody under suspicion of leaking information from Jan's bureau, is Bugs's darkest hour - in the best sense of the word. The interrogation scenes are quite grim, and her eventual escape and short life on the run is a terribly taut sequence.
The penultimate episode, Identity Crisis, was a surprise. After spending eight episodes wondering whether the shifty Jan was responsible for the leaks, we discover that it's actually someone else and she knows just who it is. But they know that she knows and Jan is kidnapped, and replaced by someone else called Jan. It's then our Jan's turn to go on the run.
| The final episode was the crowning glory, and the most annoying thing I've seen in year. The CyberAx virus (an intelligent computer program that has learnt how to cross the barrier between technology and biology) makes a chilling return and the Bugs team must prevent it starting a war between Man and Machine. To cut a long story short, the guys win and all five of them are awarded medals of commendation - and then, aggravation of aggravations, the season (and very probably the entire series) ends with a cliffhanger. Ros prepares dinner for the rest of the team in celebration of their victory, but when they arrive they find shattered glasses and her image torn from the photo of their medal-receiving ceremony. And we don't know who took her, why, or whether we'll ever see her again. Despite this, Season Three of Bugs was one of the finest cult programmes the BBC has been responsible for in ages. If you avoided it because of the reputation garnered by the first two seasons, you missed a treat. It was almost as if the traditional decline of a series into hollow self-parody had been reverse with Bugs, as Season Three showed us exactly what we'd been missing for two years. It's a great shame the series hasn't been this consistently interesting, and a greater shame that it very probably won't get the change to be as interestin in a fourth. Bye-bye Bugs. A couple of people will miss you. |
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Aired 19 July to 29 Sept 1997