Danger UXB

Danger UXB was a 1979 British ITV television series developed by John Hawkesworth about a squad of Royal Engineers assigned the duty of defusing unexploded bombs ("UXBs") in England in World War II, beginning with the Blitz. It starred Anthony Andrews as Lieutenant Brian Ash, a direct commission officer on his first assignment, to 347 Section of 97 Tunneling Company, Royal Engineers. 97 Company is itself a rookie in its new assignment: explosive ordnance disposal. Both must learn the job by experience and the most rudimentary of training.

Maurice Roëves played Sergeant James, his section sergeant; Robert Pugh played one of the "sappers". The series primarily featured military story lines, with a romantic thread featuring an explosives expert's married daughter, Susan Mount (Judy Geeson), with whom Ash falls in love, and other human interest vignettes.

The programme was titled and partly based on the memoirs of Major A. B. Hartley, M.B.E, RE, Unexploded Bomb.^[1] The series was filmed in 1978 in and around the Clapham/Streatham/Tooting area of London.^{[citation needed]}

The programme appeared on the U.S. public television network as part of Masterpiece Theatre from 1980 to 1981.

Episodes

Dead Man's Shoes
Unsung Heroes
Just Like a Woman
Cast Iron Killer
The Silver Lining
The Quiet Weekend
Digging Out
Bad Company
Seventeen Seconds to Glory
Butterfly Winter
Dead Letter
The Pier
With Love From Adolf

The Series was first broadcast between 8th January and 2nd April 1979 on Monday nights at 9.00pm, with an afternoon repeat on Thursdays at 2.25pm. It had one further broadcast on Thursdays at 10.30pm between 14th January and 22nd April 1982.

Books

Danger UXB, a novel based on the series and written by Michael Booker, was published by Pan Books in 1978, and an annual was published by World Distributors in 1980.

Notes

Hartley's book provided many of the plot details.

Many of the bomb-disposal scenes were filmed in what appeared to be deep, freshly-dug holes lined with wooden shoring (the way real bomb disposal often happened). In fact, these scenes were shot using two different physical sets interlaced:

a short above-ground wooden fence that appeared to be the top of the shaft down to the bomb (but was not in fact excavated), and
a 30-foot above-ground hollow wooden tower with a muddy area inside at the bottom (often shot from above, looking down). (A side of the bottom was also removable to facilitate "bottom-of-shaft" close-ups.)

References

^ Hartley, A.B. (1958). Unexploded bomb, a history of bomb disposal. London: Cassell. p. 272. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Episode Guide
Danger UXB at IMDb
Alvarado, Manuel; Stewart, John (1985). Made for Television-Euston Films Limited. pp. 201, 210. ISBN 0-423-01310-6.

[1] Hartley, A.B. (1958). Unexploded bomb, a history of bomb disposal. London: Cassell. p. 272. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

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