Series synopsis
Boon is a British comedy drama crime television series that premiered on ITV1 on January 14, 1986. It ended on December 1, 1992. It stars Michael Elphick, David Daker, Neil Morrissey and Elizabeth Carling.
Boon is a British television drama and modern-day western series starring Michael Elphick, David Daker, and later Neil Morrissey. It was created by Jim Hill and Bill Stair and filmed by Central Television for ITV. It revolved around the life of a modern-day Lone Ranger and ex-firefighter, Ken Boon.
Premise
Boon is a British television drama and modern-day western series starring Michael Elphick, David Daker, and later Neil Morrissey. It was created by Jim Hill and Bill Stair and filmed by Central Television for ITV. It revolved around the life of a modern-day Lone Ranger and ex-firefighter, Ken Boon.
Cast and characters
Leading cast
- Michael Elphick as Ken Boon
- David Daker as Harry Crawford
- Neil Morrissey as Rocky Cassidy
- Elizabeth Carling as Laura Marsh
- Amanda Burton as Margaret Daly
- Saskia Wickham as Alex Wilton
- Rachel Davies as Doreen Evans
- John Sessions as Barney Spitz
Supporting cast
- Tracie Bennett
- Stephen Rea as Frank Warren
- Shirin Taylor
- Warren Clarke
- John Forgeham
- Geoffrey Hinsliff
- Tony Doyle
- Brigit Forsyth
- Anthony Stewart Head
- Philip Whitchurch
- Lynsey Baxter
- Richard Griffiths
Guest cast
- John Sessions as Barney Spitz
- Tracie Bennett
- Stephen Rea as Frank Warren
- Shirin Taylor
- Warren Clarke
- John Forgeham
- Geoffrey Hinsliff
- Tony Doyle
- Brigit Forsyth
- Anthony Stewart Head
- Philip Whitchurch
- Lynsey Baxter
Episodes
This series spans 7 seasons with 93 episodes.
| Season | Episodes | First aired | Last aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 13 | January 14, 1986 | April 8, 1986 |
| Season 2 | 13 | February 17, 1987 | December 1, 1987 |
| Season 3 | 13 | November 1, 1988 | January 24, 1989 |
| Season 4 | 13 | October 2, 1989 | December 20, 1989 |
| Season 5 | 13 | September 25, 1990 | December 18, 1990 |
| Season 6 | 14 | September 24, 1991 | December 24, 1991 |
| Season 7 | 14 | September 8, 1992 | December 1, 1992 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Box 13 Harry retires from the fire brigade and Ken is invalided out after his lungs are damaged while rescuing a boy from a fire. Harry buys a seedy hotel, The Grand. Ken buys a caravan, The Ponderosa, and tries to make a living as a market gardener. Harry suggests that Ken should supplement his income by offering to do odd-jobs for people - he places an advert in the local paper. His first client is Barney Spitz, a pop music promoter who wants Ken to dress up in an old fireman's uniform and star in a pop video! |
January 14, 1986 |
| 2 | Fools Rush In | January 21, 1986 |
| 3 |
Answers to the Name of Weston Elena and Arturo Sandini (aka Helen and Arthur Sanders) run a circus lion-taming show. They ask Ken to recover their lion, Watson, which has been stolen by a group of animal-rights campaigners who want to use it to publicise their cause. |
January 28, 1986 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Texas Rangers Harry has sold the Grand Hotel and bought a much more prestigious hotel, The Coaching Inn in Edgbaston. Doreen has moved to Spain and out of Ken's life. Harry is trying to raise some publicity for the grand opening that he has planned at The Coaching Inn, but the newspaper reporter isn't very interested. However Harry persuades them to print a photo if he can get it to the newspaper by their deadline. But who can perform the opening ceremony, now that the mayor isn't able to attend. By chance Emlyn Price Jones, a fiery red-haired Welsh MP, who is somewhat the worse for drink, is staying in the hotel so Harry gets him to do the honours. While Ken is taking the film of the grand opening to the newspaper office, he is ambushed by a gang of Hells Angels. Ken is starting up a motorcycle courier firm, Texas Rangers, which will operate out of the stables at the Coaching Inn, in which he has a financial stake. He is living in a flat above the stables. He has bought an ancient trans |
February 17, 1987 |
| 2 |
Special Delivery Harry is thinking of extending the Coaching Inn and entertains a local councillor, James Petherbridge, to lunch in the hope that he will put in good word for Harry at the planning meeting. Unfortunately for Ken, the plans would involve the demolition of the stables used as Texas Rangers' office. Petherbridge is being pursued by an over-ambitious TV journalist, Linda West, who is determined to prove that he is corrupt and is accepting gifts in exchange for ensuring that applicants' plans are passed. Things look bad when it is revealed that he has just returned from a holiday in Sardinia. Then he receives a package of pornographic books, unwittingly delivered by Ken. The police arrive as Ken hands over the package. Because Texas Rangers is implicated by delivering the package, Ken investigates- to clear his own name as well as Petherbridge's. He discovers that the pornographic magazines have come from a seedy club run by Sillitoe, a florid-faced, fruity-voiced man who reluctantly reveals |
February 24, 1987 |
| 3 |
Day of the Yokel Debbie thinks that Ken is getting very unfit so she takes him out jogging. A spirited elderly woman, Irene Maplethorpe, is being victimised by pranks at Moat Farm where she lives. A dead sheep is found in a water-trough; cattle get loose; the farmyard is flooded; she gets anonymous phone calls and finally a barn is "accidentally" demolished by a JCB. A consortium of unscrupulous property developers, Rathbone, Keen and Blackwater (RKB), has designs on the land where Moat Farm is situated. They are planning to build ""luxury dwellings"" there, even though they don't yet own the land. RKB put pressure on Irene's wimpish nephew, Philip Lainchbury, who runs a sawmill that is in financial difficulties, to get him to persuade Irene to move. RKB offer Harry the chance to invest in the consortium and take him shooting on the land next to Moat Farm. Irene demands that they leave her alone - and shoots out the tyres of Rathbone's car to emphasise her point. Irene suspects that her nephew is involve |
March 3, 1987 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Charity Begins At Home (Part One) Harry organises a charity ball with a dodgy character who runs off with all the money, leaving Harry to face an investigative journalist's cameras; he is forced into promising to replace the enire sum. The Texas Rangers, meanwhile, are thought responsible for some industrial espionage - which threatens to close them down. Rocky helps uncover the real leak, and Boon re-establishes relations with Margaret. |
November 1, 1988 |
| 2 |
Charity Begins At Home (Part Two) Ken and Margaret finally track down the runaway Jay, but not before he's spent all the money. During the course of an unusual blackmail case, Margaret discovers that her new boyfriend is a liar. In the end, Boon does so well at both cases that she asks him to be her partner. |
November 8, 1988 |
| 3 |
A Fistful of Pesetas Ken becomes a minder for a spy who has just been released from prison - a newspaper has an exclusive story contract and wants to protect its investment. It's not easy, however: rival newshounds are soon on the scent, and even the secret services are traling behind... |
November 10, 1987 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Walking off Air Ken has moved to Nottingham and has set up Boon Investigations, operating out of a small office near the Castle. His first case involves him being employed by Gerry Anscomb, manager of a local radio station, Sherwood Sound. He wants Ken to act as minder for Eddie Cotton, ""The Man You Love To Hate"", a brash loud-mouthed young DJ who has a habit of turning up for work drunk... or not even turning up at all. They want to make sure he will not let them down at a Charity Telethon this coming weekend. Eddie gives Ken chance to plug Boon Investigations on the radio. Ken and Eddie go to a snooker club where Eddie gives Ken the slip and picks up Donna Delaney, a leggy young woman who wears cowboy boots and has closely-cropped blonde hair. Eddie and Donna go to a night club where she drugs him. He makes something of a spectacle of himself and gets his photo printed in the gossip column of the local paper. He misses his show and a fellow DJ, Tony Lyons, has to stand in for him. He eventually turn |
October 2, 1989 |
| 2 |
Of Meissen Men Ken is approached by Marion Kershaw who is looking for her missing husband, Geoff, who is in ""the import/export business"". Ken soon discovers that Geoff Kershaw owes money to the taxman. At the squash court that Kershaw uses, Ken finds a holdall containing a large amount of cash, a false passport and a gun. The police tell him that Kershaw is wanted for running an antiques smuggling business, stealing antiques around the country and sending them abroad. Ken and Harry agree to stage a fake robbery at Woodcote Park so as to have some ""stolen"" antiques with which to tempt the smugglers. The local contact for them turns out to be Eric Beveridge, an antiques dealer who has just sold Helen some chairs for Woodcote Park. Geoff and Marion meet up at a deserted quarry - the ""missing person"" story is evidently a cover. With Harry and the police tailing them, Beveridge takes Ken to the quarry where Marion recognises Ken. After a dramatic chase, Beveridge and the Kershaws are arrested. Helen catch |
October 9, 1989 |
| 3 |
The Relief of Matty King At the Magistrates Court, the renewal of a gaming licence for the Carrington Club run by Dick Vaughan, is postponed pending further enquiries after a punter in the public gallery alleges that he was cheated by Vaughan. Vaughan does not realise that the ""punter"" is really Rupert Cole, who runs a rival gambling club. Vaughan gets Ken to investigate - if any of his croupiers are cheating, he wants to know before the Gaming Board investigators call on him. Ken spends the evening at the Carrington but sees nothing unusual so he asks Helen to come with him the following night. She soon notices that Jackie, one of the blackjack croupiers, is cheating. Ken pretends to be a writer, researching a university psychology textbook on gambling, in order to gain Jackie's confidence. He challenges her and she admits that she has been persuaded by Cole to cheat and to make sure that she is caught, so that the Carrington will be blamed and will lose its gaming licence. Ken has one of his famous conflicts |
October 16, 1989 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Trouble in the Fields Harry has evidently gone up in the world since he sold Woodcote Park because he now drives a Jaguar XJ6. He is planning to start a security business from offices at a canal basin by the Trent but his bank manager, Mr Statter, refuses him a loan. Ken, Rocky and Laura have moved from Royal Hill and are temporarily working out of a very tacky caravan. Ken is on horseback, investigating water pollution and dead fish at a quarry near Dornford Hall for his clients, the peremptory and patronising Dr Sinclair Lewis, and Simon, a member of an ecological pressure group. They believe that the pollution is due to the dumping of toxic waste, possibly solvents used in the production of ceramics. Suddenly an air-rifle pellet is fired at Ken's horse, throwing him off. A beautiful Polish woman, Irena Tadeusz, who lives at Dornford Hall, rescues him. She tells him about a friend, Brigadier Charles, who was beaten up in a robbery. She is very frightened, so Ken offers to do a free survey with a view to f |
September 25, 1990 |
| 2 |
Tales from the River Bank Ken is asked to investigate the fiancée of Lawrence Varlish. He suspects that she might be having an affair with her hypnotherapist, Geoffrey Phillips. Harry goes to see Phillips, posing as an anxious patient, and soon discovers that Varlish is worrying over nothing. Two suspicious-looking South African men are waiting in the car park of the newly-opened CBS offices. They are anxious to collect something from a boat on the river. Nearby a narrow-boat belonging to a certain Mrs Walters is commandeered at gunpoint by Hobson, a suave man with a painfully cultured accent, accompanied by a Scotsman called Dilkes. They urgently need transport because their own boat has broken down. That night, when Ken is asleep on his yacht, he is woken up by the sound of heavy objects being thrown in to the water. Still half asleep, he peers out of the window but can't see anything and soon goes back to sleep. After advertising in the local paper, Ken and Harry are inundated with enquiries for missing pers |
October 2, 1990 |
| 3 |
Work, Rest & Play Harry has a contract to guard the puppies that a pedigree Afghan hound is expecting. When the puppies are born, it turns out that the father was a mongrel! Because the puppies are not pedigrees, the contract falls through and Harry is left with a lot of surplus surveillance equipment. A Scottish footballer from Dundalk, Willie Connolly, wants Ken to act as his minder. Shortly after moving down to play in a local Nottingham team, his car was vandalised by a gang of thugs. Ken is warned off by a Glaswegian who freely admits smashing up the car and tells Ken to pass on the message to Willie that ""he's got twenty-four hours"". Willie and his girlfriend, Belinda, are planning to buy a house nearby. While they are looking round the house before buying it, a woman arrives and catches Willie and Belinda kissing... she is Willie's wife, Moira! Willie was separated from Moira whom he had left in Scotland. The ""mad Glaswegian bookie"" who smashed up the car is Moira's father, Donny McGregor, who is |
October 9, 1990 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Help Me Make It Through The Night Ken is in the process of moving into a derelict house in the village of Upper Ridley. He has arranged with the owner that he will live there rent-free in exchange for renovating it. John Pritchard approaches Harry and wants CBS to provide security guards for the launch of his new health club. He wants the guards to wear tracksuits, which he will provide, so they will blend in with the punters. Harry promotes Rocky to ""executive"" and gives him the task of employing suitable college students: no mean feat when all the tracksuits are extra small! One of the students, Vicky ""Mouthpiece"", gives Rocky a hard time, quoting the Factory and Sex Discrimination Acts as she attempts to do as little work as possible. However Rocky soon puts her in her place. John Dewar, the owner of a dairy, suspects that his wife, Melissa, may be having an affair and asks Ken to investigate. Ken is reluctant to do so, firstly because he wants to get on with moving into his new house and secondly because he hates w |
September 24, 1991 |
| 2 |
Two Men in a Vault Ken and Harry call in on the spur of the moment to check Don Jakes, the security guard that they have employed at a safety deposit company, Unicorn Deposit Ltd. While searching for him, they walk into the vault. The door swings shut and an unknown person locks it behind them, trapping them inside. Ken and Harry see that the vault has been ransacked and that the cable for the security camera has been cut. They realise that they will probably be trapped all weekend. They think that Don might have been attacked, which is why he can't rescue them. Don leaves the vault and meets his Scottish girlfriend, Billie. They have stolen the contents of the vault and are planning to run away together to Argentina. Ken had arranged to meet Laura, who is getting obscene phone calls at home. When he doesn't turn up and she can't contact either him or Harry, she gets very worried. She and Rocky start to investigate. Don's wife, Jeanette, becomes suspicious when she sees Don with Billie, who is her hairdr |
October 1, 1991 |
| 3 |
Trial and Error Ken and Harry are involved in a court case, giving evidence against a landlord, Michael Roach who is accused of terrorising his tenants into leaving his houses. Some time ago, Ken had been employed by George and May Jenkins, and Aziz Hussain, Roach's tenants who live on a run-down estate. Jimmy Craven, one of Roach's thugs, had forced his way into the Jenkins' flat and vandalised the furniture, with the George and Mabel looking on in horror. When their neighbour, Aziz Hussain, had tried to intervene, he was beaten up. Roach was clearly behind the attacks: he wanted to redevelop the land on which the flats stood and had resorted to violent tactics after the more subtle approach (eg refusing to carry out repairs) had failed to work. The Jenkins and Hussains wanted Ken to gather evidence that Roach was paying Jimmy Craven. Ken and Rocky waited outside a pub that Craven was known to frequent, and photographed Roach handing over a large envelope of cash. But they were spotted and Craven and |
October 8, 1991 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
MacGuffin's Transputer Laura has left CBS: according to Rocky this is because she felt that Harry was taking her for granted. Charlie Hardiman is having to answer the phone and act as secretary. Harry is desperate to find a permanent replacement but all the girls that he has interviewed so far are proving to be singularly useless. Robert MacGuffin, a hardware designer who works for a computer company, Pictel, believes that his former secretary, Alexandra Wilton, is stealing the design for the company's latest transputer. He wants Ken and Harry to watch her. He suspects her of industrial espionage because she has just resigned for no apparent reason (or so he says) and she already has a prison record for cheque fraud. Ken and Rocky set up their cameras and binoculars in a disused warehouse opposite the studio flat where she lives. Rocky follows Alex to the ice rink where she meets her boyfriend, Jim Parham. When Ken sees a middle-aged man arrive at Alex's flat and offer her a cheque which she refuses, he trie |
September 8, 1992 |
| 2 |
Queen's Gambit At a Rotary Club dinner, Harry meets Joe Green, a local businessman. Joe is at the centre of a hate campaign: his car has been repeatedly sabotaged, he has received a newspaper cutting about himself with a red dagger drawn across it and someone pretending to be his secretary has cancelled the caterers at a Chamber of Commerce dinner that he was organising. He suspects that someone is trying to prevent him going ahead with a business deal to buy a restaurant, ""Maximillians"" in Derby. He asks Harry to investigate. He also wants Harry to invest in the restaurant deal, along with another businessman, Charles Hastings, and promises him a seat in the Star Chamber if this deal goes ahead. Harry persuades Ken to act as Joe's bodyguard. At Joe's house, Ken meets Joe's wife Sheila who seems unexpectedly worried that Joe has engaged a bodyguard. Joe is extremely arrogant and peremptory to Ken, treats him like dirt and can't even be bothered to get his first name right. Ken takes an instant dislik |
September 15, 1992 |
| 3 |
Walkout Mrs Van Bueren, a middle-aged widow, arrives home to find that she has been burgled. Fortunately the thieves have not taken her jewels. She enlists Ken's help to guard them. Ken takes away the jewellery box, full of tiaras and necklaces, to store it in CBS' safe. Meanwhile, Mr Fraser, a rep from a security firm, is showing Harry his company's products - a mugger-proof briefcase and a safe alar. Harry is not impressed and sends Fraser away with a flea in his ear... but not before he has seen Mrs Van Bueren's jewellery. Rocky is behaving very strangely: his heart isn't in his work any more and he hasn't turned up for work. He has started wearing aftershave and he has bought a clapped-out Ford Capri with a musical horn and a noisy exhaust. All this is because he has fallen madly in love with Melanie King, a demure cashier at his bank. Harry has noticed that Rocky isn't really concentrating and is ""on another planet"", so he gives him an easy job: guarding a sculpture exhibition consisting |
September 22, 1992 |
Production
Release
| Original network/platform | ITV1 |
|---|---|
| First aired | January 14, 1986 |
| Last aired | December 1, 1992 |
| Runtime | 60 minutes |
| Status | ended |
| Schedule | Tuesday |