BUGS

Whaddya get when you cross the old TV shows Mission Impossible and The Avengers with the Redford/Poitier movie Sneakers and shoot it in London (in between IRA bomb blasts)?

You get BUGS!

Not the creepy-crawly twitchy-feeler kind, but the itty-bitty listening-device kind…

Sadly, the show reached its end, after 4 seasons detailing the continuing adventures of Beckett, Ed, Ros, and Alex…an ex-intelligence agent, a helicopter pilot, an electronics expert & a mere slip of a girl who’s also a martial-arts aficionado…They take down villains the old-fashioned way: not with Uzis or fists of steel, but with their brains!

Very slick production values for a weekly TV show. Series consultant was the producer of the old Avengers TV series … what could be cooler? Produced by Brian Eastman (Shadowlands, Under Suspicion and the original BBC series Traffic), it aired on the BBC, and still airs in numerous other countries, though not in the U.S.!

Why, you might ask, bring in American writers for a BBC show? Hey, if you want action & hi-tech sheen, who ya gonna call?

Terry Borst and Frank De Palma, of course…

(Novelist Neal Stephenson [SnowCrash] suggests that in the future, Americans will only maintain their world dominance in 2 arenas: delivering pizza in 30 minutes or less, and writing software code. We’re trying to keep it a 3rd…)

Here are the episodes where we received screenplay credit.  Several other episodes originated from our story premises, but we didn’t receive onscreen story credit.

• “For Love and Money“, aka “The Enemy Within.” Aired Fall ’98. In the second part of a blockbuster season finale, Alex has gone missing, her fiance Adam has a lot of explaining to do — and it’s only 48 hours before their wedding!
• “Spinning the Web“, aka “Money Spiders.” Aired Fall ’98. Who’s been looking in your computer lately? Our heroes want to know…
• “Pandora’s Box.” Aired Summer ’98. A plague accidentally unleashed by the discovery of a legendary Arthurian treasure could kill tens of thousands…unless our heroes can bottle it up!
• “Father’s Day“, aka “The Two Becketts.” Aired Summer ’98. Beckett comes face to face with his father… something he’d just as soon have skipped…
• “Never Mind the Anarchy“, aka “Buried Treasure.” Aired September ’97. Think of this as The Unbearable Lightness of Hacking…
• “Ransom“, aka “The Price of Peace.” Aired Summer ’97. A Nelson Mandella-type statesman is kidnapped, and the peace process at an international flashpoint threatens to be derailed unless our BUGS team can get him back…
• “Blackout.” Aired Spring ’96. A new-generation power station is seized by environmental terrorists who seem to have a hidden agenda…and Ros is one of their hostages!

Wanna find out more about BUGS? Head to the official BUGS website, and watch the opening and closing titles. Additionally, a nice look back at the show from Den of Geek!, making the case that BUGS paved the way for contemporary shows Sherlock and Black Mirror.