Bugs (television programme)
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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 Clemens, who had previously worked on The Avengers, and described Bugs as "an Avengers for the 1990s". Other notable series writers included Colin Brake and Stephen Gallagher. One episode was 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 gadgetary, 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 Beckett (Jesse Birdsall), Roz (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, whose head was codenamed Jan (Jan Harvey).
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. This suffered from having its last three episodes delayed and not broadcast for over a year, and another attempt to save the show by giving the season a cliffhanger ending was not successful, and the ending of the final episode — as Roz and Beckett are abducted by an unseen attacker who Beckett recognises — was never resolved.
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.
