Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The setting is England, 1940. A young, newly-commissioned officer arrives at his headquarters. Whatever he may be expecting, it is not to find out that his first appointment is heading up a bomb disposal unit. It is an assignment in which the life expectancy is ten weeks, and the disposal men die at a rate of one per day. When Lieutenant Brian Ash (played superbly by Anthony Andrews (Brideshead Revisited)) realizes that there has been no mistake and that, with no previous knowledge, training or understanding of bombs or bomb defusal, he is to take charge of one of the units, the look on his face is worth a thousand words. I for one certainly felt a shiver go down my spine. You see, as the officer in charge, it will be Ash's duty to physically disable the bombs. The rest of the unit--the sappers, as they're called--are there to do the digging and wood-framing around the bombs so that the officer in charge can access them and so that they can be lifted out and carted away for detonation once they're disarmed.
Produced and written (for the most part) by John Hawkesworth, who is most famous for having brought us both Upstairs Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street, Danger UXB is a 1979 production and is an absolutely superb period drama--every bit as good as his two better-known offerings and sure to be enjoyed by those who've enjoyed either of those series. This series, which consists of thirteen 50-minute episodes, revolves around Ash and his unit as they fight the neverending battle of getting rid of unexploded bombs. The Germans actually used to drop bombs that were designed to remain intact upon impact, often until such time as they were tampered with or until a certain amount of time had passed. The British were initially unprepared for such a tactic, and with no instruction manuals, they had little choice but to learn about the types of bombs and how best to defuse them through observation and experimentation and with the aid of a lot of luck. To make matters worse, the Germans kept redesigning the bombs in order to thwart the efforts of the defusers. As a point of interest, over 20,000 UXBs were moved by disposal units during the war.
DVD extras: A 45-minute "History Channel" documentary (an American production) about modern-day bomb disposal units which includes interviews with the men who do the job wherein they share their experiences and reasons for choosing such a high-risk occupation. One nice thing about this DVD set is that the four discs come in extra-skinny cases (half as thick as the usual cases), which makes it much more compact for storage!
In conclusion, this is an intelligently written, superbly acted British suspense-drama (indeed, the suspense is almost unbearable at times!), and the information about the types of bombs and how they work is accurate and informative--so informative that when the series was broadcast in England, a viewer apparently realized that one of his child's toys was in fact a butterfly bomb! This is a series which will of course be of immense interest to fans of the war genre, but the appeal is broad enough that I would highly recommend it to fans of period productions in general or to anyone looking for a good suspense drama. Personally, I debated getting it, as I don't really care for war shows, but I'm glad I took a chance on it, as it's as much about relationships and individuals as it is about the dramatic and suspenseful war-time jobs the men do. With a little of something for everyone, this was a show that both the men and the women in our family thoroughly enjoyed.
Extremely highly recommended!
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