Danger UXB



A 1979 ITV series about the activities of a Bomb Disposal unit in Britain during World War Two.

Lieutenant Brian Ash is a newly-commissioned officer assigned to 97 Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers. He is shocked to find his job involves the defusing of UXB's (unexploded bombs), a task he must carry out with only rudimentary training. Even as the unit gains experience and better equipment becomes available, their German opponents are continually adapting the bombs to make them more difficult to defuse.

""The Coffin Makers Worse Customer Club: We have graves but no bodies.""
 * Anyone Can Die
 * Awesome but Impractical: Many of the bomb-disposal devices, at least on first appearance. The fuse extractor can only be used on level ground (the bomb is stuck in a wall halfway up a building). The clockstopper is an enormous magnet that stops the timer but not the spring-loaded Booby Trap. The steam steriliser is too big for the section lorry and vibrates constantly. In the final episode they're using a primitive metal detector and assume it'll be unreliable too, especially as it's detecting a bomb where there's no impact crater. Turns out it's detecting a bomb that fell early in the war but was not reported.
 * Black Widow: Elspeth in "Dead Letter". Her husband and previous lovers have all been killed in action, and she romances Ash knowing full well he's likely to get killed too. Ash accepts her advances even though it's suggested she might be jinxed.
 * Booby Trap: The anti-handling device, designed to kill bomb disposal teams. The sophistication of such devices advance as the war goes on, with boffins like Dr Gillespie constantly struggling to keep up.
 * The Casanova: Ivor Rodgers -- Ash consults him on the best place to take a married woman on a date. Rodgers congratulates Ash on his good sense. "At your age there is no more dangerous sport than deflowering debutantes."
 * Cool Car: Ash's MG.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: In "A Quiet Weekend" Ash and his married Love Interest Susan Mount slip off to a country hotel for an illicit affair. The nervous couple break down in giggles at the sight of a painting of a rampant stag.
 * Downer Ending:
 * The Dulcinea Effect: Cpl Salt is always willing to help a Damsel in Distress,
 * Eek! A Mouse!: A sapper screams when he encounters a rat, just when Ash is about to defuse a bomb designed to blow up at the slightest touch.
 * The End - or Is It?: In "Butterfly Winter" hundreds of anti-personnel bomblets are scattered over a village and the entire unit has to take part in disposing of them. As the unit drives away at the end of the episode, a bomblet they've missed is shown hanging from a tree above the road.
 * Ensign Newbie: Every officer by default at the beginning of the war, as there's no training or experience in bomb disposal available. Furthermore there's no point wasting Sandhurst-trained officers on a job that will get them killed in a few weeks, so bomb disposal officers are just promoted up from the ranks.
 * A Father to His Men: Major Luckhurst. Ivor Rodgers takes on this persona after he's promoted to command of the unit.
 * Gallows Humor: Rodgers is a master.

"Major Luckhurst: "Apparently some chap was hawking the details of these things (German detonators) in London before the war. No-one listened to him.""
 * Got Volunteered: Everyone assumes you have to volunteer for such dangerous work. They're wrong.
 * Heroic BSOD:
 * The Home Front: Which in this case is the front line.
 * Idiot Ball: The authorities have made no preparations for bomb disposal whatsoever, originally telling police and air raid wardens to just pile up UXB's somewhere out of the way.


 * Ash tries to free the detonator from a bomb stuck halfway up a brick wall by kicking it -- causing it to fall thirty feet to the ground. He gets strips torn off him by his CO, especially since the building it was stuck in was useless to the war effort.
 * If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Ash finds himself being issued with the uniform and billet of the last man killed.
 * Infant Immortality: In "Just Like a Woman" audience tension is created when a kid sneaks off to look at the bomb being defused, but when it goes off he suffers no major injuries despite having a hut collapse on him.
 * Kill It with Ice: The Y detonator has a mercury switch which detonates if the bomb is moved, so Dr Gillespie suggests using liquid oxygen to neutralise the battery long enough for the detonator to be removed. Needless to say Ash is the one who has to put this theory to the test.
 * Mad Scientist: Dr Gillespie is building a Heath Robinson Machine in his backyard for steaming explosives out of bombs. He even has a Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter in Susan Mount (who is distinctly unamused when she overhears Ash describe her this way). However the steam steriliser is the only available means of bypassing a booby-trapped detonator, so Gillespie, Susan and Ash have to work together to solve its teething problems.
 * The Neidermeyer: Captain Francis chews out Ash for burning toast, purely because he's jealous of a magazine article that Ash appeared in (under orders from his superiors). He also fails to train Ash despite being Training Officer, leaving him to pick up everything from his sergeant. When Francis becomes OC of the unit, he starts making Ash's life miserable in surrogate revenge for his own wife having an affair with a young officer.
 * Never Found the Body: Because there's usually nothing left to find.
 * Oh Crap: Several of these, usually along the lines of "It's started ticking", "We have to move the bomb to get at the fuse" or "It's that new type that's blown up anyone who's tried to defuse it so far."
 * Officer and a Gentleman: Ash very much acts this trope, even though his family is middle-class and he's never been to a military academy.
 * Really Gets Around: Norma Baker, who gets turned on by the danger of air raids and sleeps with any lodger who's willing.
 * Sacrificial Lamb: A bomb disposal officer is killed in the opening scene. Ash is his replacement with a life expectancy of only seven weeks.
 * Sergeant Rock: Sergeant James
 * Screw the War, We're Partying: "The Silver Lining" has an unexploded bomb drop in a notorious strip club. The men assigned to digging out the bomb help themselves to the food and booze lying around; it also turns out one of the girls slept through the whole commotion. Unfortunately her rendition of the Fan Dance is interrupted by the return of Sergeant James, who isn't fooled by their hasty disposal of the evidence.
 * The Scrounger: Corporal Mould, the mess orderly. Sapper Wilkins from Ash's section.
 * The So-Called Coward: Conscientious objector John Brinkley, who gets roughed up by one of the sappers on his arrival at the unit. Brinkley later becomes a bomb disposal officer
 * The Squad: 347 Section, Ash's command.
 * Stock Footage: Used for the opening credits, including a Creation Sequence of (presumably German) bombs being manufactured.
 * Time Bomb: The Germans discovered during the Spanish Civil War that bombs which failed to explode caused more disruption and fear than those that blew up right away, so some bombs have time-delay detonators that can explode days later.
 * Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Ash throws up after defusing his first bomb.
 * Wartime Wedding