Adam Faith – Budgie – A Beautiful Title Sequence

London Weekend Television’s Budgie was a great series.

It was about a small time crook in London (played by Adam Faith), who could never get things right. It was broadcast about 1972, and I saw a few episodes as a kid, but when the two series were repeated on Channel Four in the mid-eighties, and I saw it as an adult, I was very impressed by the consistent quality of the writing by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.

One of the things about the programme that appeals to me is the slow pace of it - the scenes tend to be long, and are played slowly. Some don’t like this approach in their TV drama – they want short scenes spliced together as fast as possible: it’s as though we’re turning into a society with an awful fifteen-second attention span.

Now it’s all very well wanting your TV drama fast and taut, but the problem then is, what have you got left to savour? How can you savour the characters and their development, savour their situations, their feelings, the mood and the atmosphere, when you’re too busy racing the train of your plot over the train tracks as fast as you can?

When you crank up the speed of the plot, you’ve got less screen time for the development of other things, – so other things are lost.

(And besides, if society is changing so that the average attention span is now reduced to fifteen seconds, then where is it going to end up? Where will it be in five years time – an attention span of ten seconds? And in five years after that, an attention span of five seconds? If films and TV drama continue to pander to this notion of a short attention span, then drama can only suffer. The answer is for TV drama to prove that long scenes can work, by presenting a rich material – the scenes need to be as long as the material demands – and not to pander to this notion of a small attention span.)

So I like Budgie, with its slow savouring of things. I guess that pace was more in tune with TV drama of the 70’s – another example that comes to mind is Sapphire and Steel. Some criticise that for its slow pace, but I love how that programme paces out its eerie, atmospheric scenes.

I’ve just discovered that both series of Budgie are available on amazon, so I’m off to order them, but two memories come to mind: in ‘Glory of Fulham’, Budgie comes home to his wife and says he’s brought a friend to stay. She isn’t happy about this and we then get their argument about how he lets her down. Meanwhile this friend is left waiting outside and we’re wondering who it is.

After about fifteen minutes of arguing - it takes us from the opening title sequence to just before the first commercial break – Budgie goes outside and brings in the friend. And it’s not some bloke he’s met in the pub, like we might have thought. It’s a greyhound.

Another favourite of mine was ‘Twenty Four Thousand Ball Point Pens’, which I think is a great title for an episode of a TV drama. Budgie acquires a large case of – yes, twenty four thousand ball point pens. And hopes to sell them for an easy profit. But on the way he gets involved with so many shady characters who are more experienced in wheeling and dealing than him – or more corrupt – that he ends up not seeing a penny.

Here’s a delightful clip I’ve just found on youtube of the opening title sequence – series one and two both had different music, but the same visual sequence, and here they’re presented together so you can see how the music creates a different tone. (Please ignore the coughing and direction in the background.)

What I love about the title sequence is that it simply and effortlessly sums up the essence of the series – a small time crook sees a briefcase full of money through the open window of a posh car. He steals the case and runs off, but in so doing he trips over and drops the case. The case spins open, the money spills out and is blown away by the wind. He tries desperately to catch the money but you know he’s lost again.

But the masterstroke of this sequence is how they’ve spelt out the series title, and the names of the two leads (Adam Faith, Iain Cuthbertson) in banknotes on the ground. And you see Budgie run into the frame to catch this money but it stars to blow away as soon as he bends down.

Now whilst the first part of the title sequence – Budgie stealing a case from a car – is a naturalistic one that could happen inside one of the episodes, the second part of it obviously could not - it’s now moved into surrrealism, because the Budgie character doesn’t know he’s in a drama called ‘Budgie’, and naturally isn’t going to encounter the series title on the ground; and similarly he won’t know who Adam Faith or Iain Cuthbertson is, so it makes no logical sense for him to encounter their names. And how did their names get spelt out in neat arrangements of bank notes on the ground in the first place?

But that doesn’t matter because it makes perfect sense in a convincing emotional and poetic way. It’s lovely to see the imagination of it at work. I think it’s beautifully conceived.

This playing with reality in the title sequence of a TV drama is something I also saw in children’s programmes like The Wombles and Gran. It might seem strange to link The Wombles and Budgie in the same post but bear with me.

I’ll post a link to a Wombles episode later so you can see what I mean, but my memory says that in the opening sequence, you see the Wombles on the common collecting rubbish, and one of them picks up a piece of discarded paper with “Music & Lyrics by Mike Batt” typed on it, so the viewer is both inside the programme and outside of it at the same time.

A similar effect happened in Gran in the end sequence, where for example if the story had been about a garden gnome, you’d see the gnome in question holding a piece of card with “narrated by Patricia Hayes” typed on it. And I thought it was a lovely touch, playing with the reality of it all while the end music faded out.

It may seem strange for me to be banging on about these beautiful moments in children’s TV shows, but it’s not strange at all. These programmes are made by intelligent and talented adults, and they’ve got a creativity that aches to come through in these unexpected, beautiful ways. Long may they do so.

If you’ve got your own favourite title sequences, write in and let me know, and I could start a thread called something like ‘Great Title Sequences in TV Drama’.

Now, as for the clip of Budgie I’ve just found:

“I’ve stood for it, ain’t I?”

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• The Doctor Who Theme Music and Title Sequence
• The Wombles – Title Sequence
• Jimmy McGovern on TV Drama
• Initial Ideas

~ by Paul Badger on 17 June, 2008.