Still on catch up with my reviews I’m afraid so I'll cut to the chase and here we go with the first episode of Series 2, ‘Dreaming of Thee’.
Please Note this contains Spoilers.
Budgie’s doing his ‘bird’ in open prison and has settled himself in well. However he has irked a notorious face ‘Dutchie’ Holland (Bill Dean) who doesn’t take to kindly to Budgie at all. He’s only got three weeks to go and is very well involved with the prisoners amateur dramatics society – which attracts a few camp faces let’s say!
Budgie has struck up a bit of a friendship/alliance with ‘Wossname’ Walsh (James Bolam) who is due for release shortly and he’s asked Wossname to contact his estranged wife Jean to perhaps set up some reconciliation – purely for Budgie’s benefit, when he’s released from prison. Wossname agrees and duly sees Jean but is somewhat seduced by Jean’s charms lets say.
Meanwhile during a amateur dramatic rehearsal of which pretty much all the prisoners except Budgie are in drag, Budgie irritates Dutchie more than usual when the usual ribbing about Budgie’s butler outfit and Dutchie’s drag, which Budgie points out looks like ‘one of the ugly sisters’ escalates out of control and Dutchie tries to have a punch up with Budgie.
Endell meanwhile has reappeared on the scene, despite grassing Budgie for the one armed bandit etc. which has seen him banged up here. Despite of this Budgie is reasonably friendly with Charlie, in fact it’s almost as if Charlie hasn’t done anything wrong to him. However Endell has ulterior motives and wants Budgie to locate £3,000 from Dutchie that Endell considers he was cheated out of.
Jean meanwhile after her liaison with Wossname visits Budgie and is open to the idea of a reconciliation. However it comes with the conditions that he severs his ties with Charlie, Soho, ner do well criminal associates and bits on the side like Hazel.
Budgie does his best to get the whereabouts of the £3,000 out of Dutchie but all this does is provoke Dutchie even more to the point he’s threatening violence against Budgie and has had further sanctions applied to him too – Dutchie wants to harm Budgie when he next sees him.
Budgie’s in a dilemma and despite having only three weeks of his sentence to go he decides to go over the wall, in his penguin suit from a amateur dramatics rehearsal. He has a tea in the nearby café when who is only there but Endell – another enterprise he has an ‘interest’ in. He orders and even takes back Budgie to the nick and still impresses upon him it’s job to get the £3,000 off Dutchie even though Dutchie is currently out of the way and out for Budgie’s blood.
Budgie’s back on the wing and seems fairly jocular with his fellow inmates. However a pin drops when Dutchie walks in and is walking menacingly towards Budgie. He gives Budgie a bit of a hiding which sees him transferred to the Scrubs and Budgie released early.
Budgie again is philosophical and happy go lucky about things even on his release day, however he’s in a dilemma when he exits the gates whether to choose Endell’s Roller and back to the life he had or choose Jean’s minicab and a new path away from Endell’s influence and the ducking and diving he’s had up to now!
‘Dreaming of Thee’ was a good episode to kick Series 2 off.
It gives us a bit of a backstory about Budgie’s time in prison and the year or so between Series 1 ending too.
Budgie still has the gift of the gab and can make connections with those around him, even in jail with fellow faces like Wossname and Lazy B (Loftus Burton). However Budgie's 'charms' sometimes gets him in trouble when he doesn’t know when to stop or he goes too far, with the prison authorities mainly but he’s managed to get under the skin of the open nick’s one hard case Dutchie – played brilliantly by Bill Dean, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly
and when Budgie’s banter and antics get up his nose he’s not going to let things drop with him… perhaps something Budgie has had coming in all of the outings we’ve seen him in up to now.
Wossname Walsh was an interesting character played fairly well by James Bolam too. He reappears in the next episode and does have a bit of a over-used lets say catchphrase but he was a perhaps the first sign of Bolam wanting to breakout of the Likely Lads/Terry Collier typecast that he would as the 70’s rolled on be so desperate to shed too! Also it was 2 or so years before
Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads came around again so perhaps for Bolam newer less typecast roles like Wossname may have forged a different acting path for him had the Likely Lads not been brought back again!
I’m entirely not sure the ‘Wossname’ character works here but his character gives us a in with Jean to reappear in Series 2 and sets up things well for the rest of series too.
Endell’s influence and menace is again there too see. Even though Budgie was grassed by him and is doing time as a consequence Charlie’s power over him makes Budgie completely subservient and even apologetic to him when he can’t get around Dutchie in order to get the £3,000 he owes Endell out of him. To be honest Endell doesn’t really care about the money all he’s doing here is making sure people are in their place.
Budgie in being under his control, doing his dirty work and holding to him is where Endell wants him and Endell can perhaps use Budgie to get revenge against Dutchie for what he considers was a slight against him and ‘cheating him’ and making sure no one else takes advantage of him and this in the future.
Great to see Bill Dean in a hard-(ish) man role as Dutchie.
A bit like James Bolam with the Likely Lads thing sadly actors sometimes do get a bit typecast with certain roles and Bill Dean is perhaps most associated as grumpy old man Harry Cross in Brookside. Bill's done many different roles like the one here, his small part in The Sweeney and his larger role as the borstal ‘screw’ Duke in Scum which are somewhat different to that too! Again it’s good too see actors who are perhaps a bit (unfairly) typecast in different – sometimes radically different roles, which blow these stereotypes out of the water!
The ending set’s up a dilemma for Budgie on who and what does he choose and where does he go. At best Budgie can’t make these decisions and when he does he blunders in not knowing and caring where he’s going and drifting along into the next disaster, scam or hair brained scheme which usually see’s him come off second best. This is what I’m enjoying about this and you can certainly see the links with other similar shows – like Minder etc., which took and tweaked some of these ideas too. :tumbup:
I’d rate ‘Dreaming of Thee’ a good
7.5/10 again good to see how Budgie coped with his time in stir and what the future may hold for him as we progress into Series 2.
Again apologies for these reviews being later than I’d like but I will get around to the next ones ASAP and it’s been something I’ve enjoyed watching and giving my thoughts on too.