Budgie (TV series)

Series plot

Each episode was a complete story, usually depicting Budgie's involvement in some harebrained scheme to make money, usually somewhere on the wrong side of legality. However he was continually the victim of circumstance, or of the sharper, more experienced underworld operators he tried to emulate.

Plots included:

Eventually all his "friends" desert him and he winds up back in jail, ironically for something he had nothing to do with.

Series two

Series two begins with Budgie being released from the "open nick" and staying with his wife for a few days. A chance meeting with his ex-girlfriend, Hazel, who is now living with someone else and Budgie finding out that his wife has been sleeping with a friend of Budgie's, also from the same Open prison force Budgie to move back in with his girlfriend and his son, Howard, who is now 2 years old. Budgie carried on pretty much as he did in the first series, which also started with him being released from the same open prison from a previous sentence. the second series ended with him being beaten up by both his boss and one of his henchmen. This, combined with the fact that Budgie's mother has recently died, his father not wanting him, his girlfriend - Hazel - becoming pregnant by Budgie, and the fact that he wants to leave Hazel for a stripper he has recently slept with who then tells him that she is moving abroad makes Budgie even more depressed and eventually makes him head off into a new life. This is where the series ended and nothing more was heard of Budgie.

Cast

The title role, a chirpy cockney petty criminal newly out of prison, was played by former pop singer Adam Faith and was his first starring role for television. His name in the series was Ronald 'Budgie' Bird, after the budgerigar birds sometimes kept as pets in England, and generally known in the USA as parakeets.

The series co-starred Iain Cuthbertson as Charles (Charlie) Endell, a suave and Machiavellian Glaswegian gangster based in London, who employed Budgie, often against his better judgement, or when he was in need of an unsuspecting fall guy. June Lewis played his silent wife Mrs Endell. During the late 1970s, Scottish Television produced a short-lived spin-off series, Charles Endell Esquire.

The only other regular member of the cast was Lynn Dalby as Budgie's girlfriend, Hazel Fletcher, Stella Tanner had a semi regular role as her mother, Mrs Fletcher. Rio Fanning appeared three times as Budgie's gullible criminal Irish pal, Grogan. Guest Stars included Georgina Hale as his wife, Jean, Adrienne Posta as a stripper and George Tovey as his father, Jack Bird. John Rhys-Davies has an early semi regular role as a corpulent gangster working for Endell, with the colourful name of Laughing Spam Fritter.

Production

Two series, each of 13 episodes, were made. Although colour equipment had been introduced two years earlier the first four episodes were made in monochrome because of industrial action.

A further series may have been planned for 1973 although this coincided with Adam Faith being seriously injured in a car crash and announcing his retirement from acting as a result. Despite a full recovery by Faith and his eventual return to acting, a further series was never commissioned.

Musical version

A musical - based on the characters of the series (but featuring only Adam Faith from the original TV cast) with book by the script writers of the original series - opened at the Cambridge Theatre, London on 18 October 1988 and ran for 3 months.