Rent Danger UXB (1979)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- When a young Royal Engineer Officer is killed trying to defuse a bomb, he is replaced by raw officer recruit Brian Ash (Anthony Andrews). Ash is shocked to discover that his new unit, the 97th Tunnelling Company, is in fact a hastily formed bomb disposal squad. With the Blitz devastating London every night and making massive demands on Royal Engineers' manpower, he is to take command of 347 Section forthwith. It's not long before he's facing the real thing at close range, with his men looking on from a safe distance, making bets as to whether he'll go the same way as his predecessor...
- Actors:
- Anthony Andrews, Maurice Roëves, George Innes, Gordon Kane, Robert Pugh, Ken Kitson, Jeremy Sinden, Judy Geeson, Kenneth Cranham, Osmund Bullock, Deborah Watling, Peter Cartwright, Iain Cuthbertson, Marjie Lawrence, Royston Tickner, David Shaughnessy, David Auker, Robert Longden, Kenneth Farrington, John Bowler
- Directors:
- Ferdinand Fairfax, Roy Ward Baker, Douglas Camfield, Henry Herbert, Simon Langton, Jeremy Summers
- Producers:
- John Hawkesworth
- Creators:
- John Hawkesworth, John Whitney
- Writers:
- John Hawkesworth, John Whitney, A.B. Hartley, Jeremy Paul, Don Shaw, Kenneth Clark, Paul Wheeler
- Aka:
- Danger UXB: The Complete Series
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- British TV, TV Action & Adventure, TV Classics, TV Dramas, TV Military & War Dramas
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Reviews (2) of Danger UXB
Rather Dated by todays standard - Danger UXB review by CP Customer
Interesting series of incidents covering the role of the bomb disposal squad through out the war. What threw me was the gallery of pictures to advertise the set including pictures of Sir John Gielgud who did not appear on any of the episodes I watched!
Brilliant Classic Spcial 1978/9 ITV Series made with Film on Location not Video in TV Studios - Danger UXB review by PV
There was only one series of DANGER UXB as it covers the whole of World War II, but there was no need for a second series as this is one of the best TV dramas of the last 50 years - in the top 10. The main character Brian Ash is played by Anthony Andrews who was also in another great ITV classic drama, Brideshead Revisited in 2-3 years after this. Some great character actors too such as Robert Pugh.
It has 13 parts, each one a cracker, despite every story being the same: will the bomb go off or not? My favourite episode is probably 10, BUTTERFLY WINTER, which I actually remember from the first time I watched this age 11.
The simplicity of the strong characters and trueness to life win through - unsurprisingly, the scripts were based on the memoir of a real WWII UXB officer.
Today's audiences may demand more CGI, quick editing and all the rest to pander to their tiny attention spans - and I dread what the woke pc producers of drama would do to this now (maybe make half the UXB men women?). This, however, is how it as - all white British men doing brave heroic war work defusing bombs or trying to. And, for me at least, it is better than any BBC or ITV drama today.
Watch the 45 minute documentary at the end of disc 4 - well worth a watch to learn about how the series came about.
That says the series was filmed on film and on location - the all TV drama until then was filmed on video and mostly in TV studios, so this series really was ground-breaking.
5 stars. Classic stuff.