Bugs



A mid-1990s British techno-espionage TV series, intended to be The Avengers for a new decade. The Other Wiki has the facts. Absolutely laden with Hollywood Science tropes, and quite prone to So Bad It's Good.

Died out pretty horribly due to awkward soap-opera elements being forced in. The fourth series in particular was half-dead from the start and only made worse by poor scheduling.

Shows examples of:
 * Air Vent Passageway -- Ed's entrance in Assassins, Inc.
 * Applied Phlebotinum - in spades, such as the miracle foodstuff that can be grown cheaply in large quantities which just happens to be, or (in a charity special) a machine capable of controlling the lottery draw.
 * Arcade Sounds -- Assassins, Inc. (S1E2)
 * Beeping Computers: In the Bugs universe, even the Windows 95 "pipes" screensaver renders with a loud BIP-BIP-BIP-BIP...
 * Crash-Course Landing
 * Drives Like Crazy -- Ros. When armed with Beckett's Jeep in Out of the Hive (S1E1), she decides the most efficient way to reach someone the other side of a roundabout is simply to drive over it.
 * Enhance Button -- Averted in Assasins, Inc. Ros zooms in on some blinkenlichten on a mainframe to demonstrate recovering the data being displayed, but they remain fuzzy, and she explicitly notes that the camera framerate wasn't anywhere near high to get it all. Played entirely straight on too many occasions to count.
 * Every Car Is a Pinto -- And how! They establish this with a midair explosion in the very first episode. No, it doesn't hit anything. Simply losing road contact makes it blow up.
 * I don't suppose the briefcase on the back seet (which the camera kept zooming in on, and was shown starting to slide off when they went airborne) contained a bomb?
 * It's a control unit.
 * Exact Time to Failure: in almost every single episode. Usually coupled with a Magic Countdown.
 * Facial Dialogue -- Necessitated by voice-triggered bombs.
 * Freudian Trio
 * Ros Henderson -- Ego. Most likely to take the lead.
 * Nick Beckett -- Superego. Relatively speaking.
 * Ed -- Id. Carefree.
 * Last-Name Basis -- Beckett. Oddly, not for the others in the team.
 * Magical Computer -- Assassins, Inc. has a voice-activated mainframe that seems to be lifted straight from Star Trek.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero -- Assassins, Inc. starts with Beckett doing a simple data-wiping job.
 * Once Is Not Enough: Perpetrated by most of the main characters, who take turns being taken hostage. The gold medal goes to Bureau 2 chief "Jan" for doing this several times during the same episode ("Identity Crisis"), without once stopping to pick up the stunned guard's weapon.
 * Only One Name -- Ed.
 * The Other Darrin -- Ed was Darrined for Season Four. The show promptly perished - Stephen Tompkinson was not popular.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future - the then-new London Docklands, where many of the outdoor scenes were filmed, helped with this.
 * Viewer-Friendly Interface: On every computer used. Complete with cheesy mid-'90s CGI!
 * Wrench Wench -- Ros. They all use gadgets, but she's the one most likely to have tinkered them into existence.