Phoo Action
Phoo Action is a BBC Three 60 minute TV pilot, which was first broadcast on February 12, 2008 at 21:00 UTC,[1] one of six new drama pilots that will transmit in early 2008.[2] Phoo Action is based on the Jamie Hewlett-created strip 'Get The Freebies' which ran in The Face (magazine) from June 1996 to June 1997. It stars Jaime Winstone as Whitey Action, Carl Weathers as Police Chief Benjamin 'Ben' Benson and Eddie Shin as Terry Phoo.
The show is set from the perspective of the disaffected teenage female protagonist, Whitey Action, who joins together with tough guy kung-fu cop Terry Phoo to form a dubious crime-fighting duo who thwart many mutant miscreants of The Freebies Gang on the streets of London in 2012.
The screen adaptation has been written by Matthew Enriquez Wakeham, Jessica Hynes and Peter Martin, and directed by Euros Lyn.
Production began in September 2007 at a number of Glasgow locations. Some scenes will be shot inside the main studio at BBC Scotland's Pacific Quay HQ. If the pilot is successful BBC Scotland hope to produce a series based on the concept.
edit: the review which roused my interest
magine my surprise then to find myself enjoying to an almost indecent degree Phoo Action, the first of a series of one-off dramas on the channel, and surely set to become a series. It was a sci-fi comic-book parody that in its zest and determination to work for both adults and children reminded me of the old Adam West Batman series. Apparently it hails from a comic strip by Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of Tank Girl and Gorillaz, and first appeared in dearly departed magazine The Face. Who knew?
It is set in London in 2012 where the latest terrorist threat comes from a gang of mutants called the Freebies. The Freebies bump off the Queen and kidnap the Royal princes, mercilessly played as a couple of mindless hoorays. Enthroned instead is Jimmy Freebie, who looks like Zippy from Rainbow and has a habit of telling people to look him in the eye, which is hard since he doesn't have one. As the American police chief Benjamin Benson (Carl Weathers), says: “It stinks like a dirty dog's doughnut.”
Phoo's heroes are a diminutive martial-arts fighter named Terry Phoo (Eddie Shin), possibly the incompetent offspring of the Pink Panther's Cato, and a teenager from hell called Whitey (Jaime Winstone). She is like Toyah Wilcox without the finishing-school manners and although, as her name suggests, she is white, she is also the daughter of the extremely black Chief Benson. The dynamic duo are armed only with a Buddah's loin cloth that transforms itself into a pair of hotpants from which Whitey pulls out anything she may need.
Related Links
All expense has been spared on the sets and costumes. The mutants look as if they are wearing masks. But great care has been taken by the writers Mat Wakeham, Peter Martin and Jessica Hynes to cram jokes into every line and frame. The BBC news ticker, for example, rushes by too fast to read but if you pause it you discover gems such as: “Jackanory host indicted for perjury”, “Police probe causes minor injury” and, my favourite, “Stuff happens: people react.”
In 2012 everything is just that bit cruder. So a cereal is Smak Crak Plop & Plop, and the BBC's royal funeral coverage promises, “all the glamour, all the grief”. One thing is intact, however, royal sycophancy. Commentating on the investiture of Jimmy Freebie, the normally needlessly aggressive Glaswegian anchorman spews: “He has won our hearts. He has won our minds. He is one of us and he is now one of them.”
