Apologies for not being able to do these as quickly as I’d like recently... been mad, mad busy, however as promised here’s my review for Series 1’s, Episode 9 ‘A Pair of Charlies’.
Please Note this contains Spoilers.
Hazel’s making herself up when her hairdryer isn’t working. She decides to use the oven to dry her hair instead. Meanwhile Budgie comes around and get’s no reply. Going around the back he see’s Hazel with her head in the oven and fears the worst. Breaking in he tries to ‘rescue’ her but finds out Hazel isn’t contemplating suicide, instead is annoyed that the knocked off hairdryer he acquired from ‘Jumbo’ Stevens (George Innes) doesn’t work.
Budgie calls around to ‘Jumbo’ to get him to repair the hairdryer… and window he broke getting in Hazel’s flat. Jumbo meanwhile shows Budgie his skills at safe blowing which momentarily/slightly injuries Budgie. Jumbo’s got a in for a bank job with ‘The Birmingham Boys’ and asks if Budgie’s interested. Budgie is but is warned off the job by Endell as the bank in question is next door to one of his Sex Shops etc.
Budgie is instructed to grass on Jumbo and his associates but when he arrives at the police station Budgie chicken’s out and gives them a cock and bull story of saving a child from a dangerous driver – hence his cuts on his face. The coppers at the factory recognise who Budgie is and place him under rather obvious surveillance – including Hazel’s flat. Jumbo meanwhile calls at Hazel’s place to repair the window and hairdryer. He notices a rather obvious PC in not so subtle plain clothes staring at Hazel’s flat and thinks (wrongly) that Budgie has grassed him and The Birmingham Boys for their forthcoming job.
The Birmingham Boys want Jumbo to ‘deal with’ Budgie which Jumbo reluctantly agrees to, however Budgie is trying his luck at becoming a media hero with his cock and bull heroic story, sending his publicity pictures to the press etc. and then becomes very hard to find, much to the frustration of Jumbo, Hazel, Endell and the local law who are trying to follow his trail.
Things conclude with Budgie back at Hazel’s and he tries to convince her she’s his only one and buys her a ring at the local jewellers. This is next door to the bank Jumbo and The Birmingham Boys are hitting and also next to Charlie’s Sex Shop. Things end with a chaotic scene of the robbers crashing their Land Rover into the jewellers, the police into the bank and Charlie his Jaguar into his Sex Shop, when the smoke clears Budgie emerges with his usual whit and wisdom for Charlie… after a few seconds he lets out a primal scream of rage at what has happened.
Perhaps a lot more slapstick than the other episodes we’ve looked at ‘A Pair of Charlies’ is very funny and quite good episode.
Again one of Budgie’s dodgy scams, procuring a stolen hairdryer proves his undoing as he get’s tangled up with Jumbo and his associates The Birmingham Boys who are onto a much bigger thing than what he’s ever going to be involved with.
It also shows the paranoia – albeit in this instance done so for comedy, villains have too. Jumbo wrongly jumps to the conclusion that Budgie’s grassed on him and as villains do when that happens the law of the playground applies.
The Birmingham Boys want Budgie wasted but Jumbo is a little reluctant to go that far. I’m not sure what would’ve happened had Jumbo caught up with Budgie I assume a
straightener would be the order of the day here and maybe Budgie could’ve talked his way out of it. If it were the Birmingham Boys I’m sure it’d be something much nastier/worse!
Endell’s also party to these
laws of the street too. Not sure if he’s an associate, rival or nemesis of The Birmingham Boys but he wants to throw down a mark that they’re not welcome on his patch unless he’s cut into a slice of their action which we assume here he’s not.
Also he doesn’t want their activities drawing attention to his Sex-Boutique businesses which is exactly what their bank job would do so by having Budgie do a bit of grassing for him – as he orders Budgie to do, he’ll have them out of his way for a while… until maybe it suits him to use them in the future.
Just perhaps going beyond the story here it’d be interesting if Endell ever did get into a ‘gang war’ with rival villains/teams how he’d fair and who would come out on top as Charlie has a menace and formidability I’m sure he could back up but when push comes to shove in those situations it’s the over obvious villains who perhaps don’t or can’t back their reputations up in that area?
The safe blowing scene with Jumbo was hilarious.
I wonder if Adam Faith did get a few cuts of that for real?
I also liked the ‘hero-story’ backstory Budgie quickly invented for himself when he chickened out of grassing up Jumbo at the police station too. It shows to me Budgie is an attention seeker – whether it is with birds like Hazel, being one of the 'chaps' and ‘faces’ around villains like Endell or simply wanting to play the hero in the media he loves the limelight, loves even the infamy rather than being another anonymous face on the street. It also perhaps pre-dates the more recent phenomena of people these days wanting the celebrity profile/lifestyle and doing almost anything to achieve it… even if they look like complete morons in the process.
The police surveillance scenes were hilarious too especially when the PC trailing Budgie was trailed by Jumbo too
... I think this might have been the score not a few years ago too.
The ending was perhaps a little predictable but still was very funny and enjoyable – especially Charlie’s cries of rage at the end when he not Budgie seems for once to be the one who suffered most with all this.
Also interesting was the use of Roger Whittaker’s music in this, including the now perhaps infamous ‘Two Little Boys’ track too!
Again another very enjoyable episode I’d rate around
7.5/10… perhaps not quite the ducker and diver consistency the series has had up to now but again the good thing about Budgie is it subtly changes as and when it goes along, just a shame TPTV messed up some of the running order as it’d made more sense going from these to Fiddler on the Hoof rather than!
Hopefully I’ll catch up with my reviews for Series 2 sharpish too. Generally they’ve been very good up to now too and again enjoying the exploits of Ronald ‘Budgie’ Bird and co. up to now!