Deborah Watling

Danger UXB is a 1979 British ITV television series about World War II developed by John Hawkesworth and starring Anthony Andrews as Lieutenant Brian Ash, an officer in the Royal Engineers.

The series chronicles the exploits of the fictional 97 Tunnelling Company which as a result of thousands of unexploded bombs in London during the Blitz has been made a bomb disposal unit. As with all his fellow officers, Ash must for the most part learn the techniques and procedures of disarming and destroying the UXBs through experience, repeatedly confronted with more cunning and deadlier technological advances in aerial bomb fusing. The series primarily featured military story lines, with a romantic thread featuring an inventor’s married daughter, Susan Mount, 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 – The Story of Bomb Disposal, with episodes written by Hawkesworth and four screenwriters. The series was filmed in 1978 in and around the Clapham, Streatham and Tooting areas of South London.

The programme appeared on the U.S. PBS as a segment of Masterpiece Theatre from January 4 to April 5, 1981. It was also screened in Australia on the public broadcaster ABC Television.