Banged Up Abroad makes no pretensions to being anything higher than pantomime, and we love it for its limitations, but this episode really scrapes the bottom.
In Crete, a Scottish yachtsman, Donald, is asked to give sailing lessons to a couple of beach-bums, Denis and Frank. By the time they get to Malta, the agenda has changed a bit. Frank turns out to be a dealer, wanting to use the yacht for a major cocaine haul, and the other two agree to accept £40,000 each to bring it back from Venezuela. The trap has been sprung, and they're suddenly up to their necks in serious Caribbean mischief with no means of escape. As always, the scheme is declared risk-free, and they're scheduled to be on their way home in 48 hours. Six weeks later, it's not looking so neat and tidy...
Donald and Denis must be the oddest couple yet. Donald is clearly well-educated, speaking in well-formed sentences, and quite a philosopher in his way. As different as you can get is Denis, who spends half the time saying "Know what I mean?", yet it's hard to make out a word he's saying, not only because his Lancashire accent is so impenetrable, but because his dialogue simply does not consider the other person. It's an extended splotch of sound that just reflects what is going on in his scrambled brain.
But it's hard to keep up with the story anyway, certainly at the beginning. We can't quite establish who's who, until we realise that the mysterious Frank (not his real name) isn't around for interviewing - not surprisingly, as Denis declares that Frank "is, or was" a close buddy, but now believes that he set up the whole sting, and has probably sold the coke to someone else. Meanwhile we don't know what happened to that glittering reward they were promised. When and how were they meant to be paid? Did they ever see a penny of it?
It is giving away nothing if we reveal that their 24-year jail sentence was reduced by a third, and eventually down to 6 years, 8 months, perhaps through Frank putting in a good word. The two of them, both family men, express their deep regret at the damage they have caused at home, which does not leave us feeling particularly sentimental about these bumbling amateurs who should simply have stayed in the day-job. Denis says that his jail experience has taught him about consequences. Donald says it has shown him that "not everything is good or bad, black or white" - rather an odd conclusion. I would have thought it had shown the opposite: that it was through blurring the distinction between right and wrong that he came to grief.
In Crete, a Scottish yachtsman, Donald, is asked to give sailing lessons to a couple of beach-bums, Denis and Frank. By the time they get to Malta, the agenda has changed a bit. Frank turns out to be a dealer, wanting to use the yacht for a major cocaine haul, and the other two agree to accept £40,000 each to bring it back from Venezuela. The trap has been sprung, and they're suddenly up to their necks in serious Caribbean mischief with no means of escape. As always, the scheme is declared risk-free, and they're scheduled to be on their way home in 48 hours. Six weeks later, it's not looking so neat and tidy...
Donald and Denis must be the oddest couple yet. Donald is clearly well-educated, speaking in well-formed sentences, and quite a philosopher in his way. As different as you can get is Denis, who spends half the time saying "Know what I mean?", yet it's hard to make out a word he's saying, not only because his Lancashire accent is so impenetrable, but because his dialogue simply does not consider the other person. It's an extended splotch of sound that just reflects what is going on in his scrambled brain.
But it's hard to keep up with the story anyway, certainly at the beginning. We can't quite establish who's who, until we realise that the mysterious Frank (not his real name) isn't around for interviewing - not surprisingly, as Denis declares that Frank "is, or was" a close buddy, but now believes that he set up the whole sting, and has probably sold the coke to someone else. Meanwhile we don't know what happened to that glittering reward they were promised. When and how were they meant to be paid? Did they ever see a penny of it?
It is giving away nothing if we reveal that their 24-year jail sentence was reduced by a third, and eventually down to 6 years, 8 months, perhaps through Frank putting in a good word. The two of them, both family men, express their deep regret at the damage they have caused at home, which does not leave us feeling particularly sentimental about these bumbling amateurs who should simply have stayed in the day-job. Denis says that his jail experience has taught him about consequences. Donald says it has shown him that "not everything is good or bad, black or white" - rather an odd conclusion. I would have thought it had shown the opposite: that it was through blurring the distinction between right and wrong that he came to grief.
