In the year 2012, buddhist kung-fu cops team up with teenage anarchist daughters of the establishment to fight supercrime! Or, at least, that's the concept behind Phoo Action, a new BBC pilot adapted by Doctor Who director Euros Lyn from a semi-forgotten strip by Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett. Influenced by the sixties Batman TV show, the odd Buddhist-futurist series just might be the next cult hit or, if nothing else, an interesting televisual oddity. Learn more about just what Phoo Action is and see a clip below.


Adapted from Hewlett's 1990s strip Get the Freebies, the 60-minute pilot follows the story of Terry Phoo, buddhist kung-fu policeman, and his mission to try and save future London from the unstoppable crime rampage of superpowered bad guys the Freebies. This being Hewlett, of course, he can't do it without the help of Whitey Action, red-haired daughter of the local Chief of Police, as played by Weathers. It may be more than ten years since Hewlett came up with the idea, but he's apparently loving the adaptation:

It's exciting, it really does look great and it is so good to see the comic strip turned into a TV drama. The costumes, the sets, the creatures are all really faithful to my original stuff... [It's] a little bit more crazy than Doctor Who but I know my sons, who are 11 and seven, will love it. I really hope it will inspire people.


Admittedly, the trailer looks more than a little off-kilter thanks to music that doesn't quite fit and a mix of actors in awesome outfits, party scenes that seem taken straight from an updated version of Head and glimpses of British comedy icons Terry Thomas and Les Dawson, but with a script co-written by one of the writers of Spaced and early reviews calling it "the goofiest thing that's been on TV for years," and comparisons to the Banana Splits and The Young Ones, it's certainly something to look out for when it premieres in the UK next Tuesday.

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Phoo Action [MySpace.com]