Timebomb (2005 TV series)

Title card

Rachel Salter (for Tiger Aspect)

**Timebomb** is a British sci-fi television series, produced by Tiger Aspect and broadcast on Toffa from 4 June to 9 July 2005. Although twelve episodes were initially produced, the latter six wouldn't air until 2018 under the name Timebomb: Earth In Ruins, as a continuation of the series.

## History and Production

When friends Tony Hoppings and Kevin Young wrote initial plans for the show in 2001, they came up with the idea of human kidnapping with a sci-fi twist. They continued development over the coming years, and pitched the show to Toffa in October 2004. While the channel did like the idea, they were concerned about the costs of producing the show in-house as it required lengthy filming and post-production work that would take months, as well as the channel running on a relatively low budget.

One month later, when Toffa gave the greenlight for the show, they approached Tiger Aspect to handle the production of the show, despite having some experience with drama productions but none with sci-fi, to which they agreed.

In pre-production, several issues occurred. The show was initially planned to be twelve episodes long and penciled to air in summer 2005, where Toffa wished to cut the series to half in order to save time and money. Hoppings and Young had also not quite finalised the scripts for the remainder of the series, so only the first six episodes were in production for the time being. The main crew members included executive producers Robert Cooper, and Rachel Salter for Tiger Aspect. Toffa placed their head of drama Drew Lingo on-board as well, with Hoppings and Young also serving as co-executive producers. Finally, the director of the show was Graeme Harper, who had previously been best known for directing several stories of the classic series of *Doctor Who* in the 1980s, so had experience with working with sci-fi drama compared to most of the other crew members.

Amy Rowan was placed as casting director, and Hoppings and Young were looking for a relative unknown to play the lead character, Henrick Ulkrinz, a thirteen-year-old boy from Sweden who had moved to the UK. Todd Carlson was given the role, having been thirteen at the time of casting which made much more sense as well as having some form of proper acting experience. He had quite a challenge when playing the role as he had to maintain a Swedish accent throughout, but this satisfied the higher-ups in charge of the show, and grew confident with it as production continued. During filming, a problem emerged, as the actor who was intended to play a supporting role in the first two episodes didn't turn up. By coincidence, 9-year-old Chris Joy took notice of filming and was keen to take part. Naturally, he was declined, but his passion and interest sparked the possibility of him stepping in, and this subsequently became the case. This saw the beginning of Joy's career with Toffa, later appearing on Toffa:AM that year alongside the chosen lead, Todd Carlson to promote the show, with it being his first television appearance, where Joy would continue to make cameos in many Toffa programmes over the years, better known as 'Cameo Guy' and still to this day, and even went on to become the main presenter of Toffa:AM itself from 2018 onwards. He would return to the Timebomb franchise in *Timebomb: Sherbert* in 2022, as the voice of Szang. Filming began in February 2005 and continued up to May, just three weeks before episode one was set to air.

After the series aired, the show was (at the time), the most-watched programme on Toffa given the frequent promotion of it, which saw the show receive an average audience of 700,000 throughout the series on Saturdays, considering the first half aired almost directly within the latter three episodes of the first series of the revival of *Doctor Who*. At around this point, director Graeme Harper was offered to return to the show to direct episodes for the second series and accepted, which resulted in him not returning to direct the other six episodes of Timebomb, thus a new director had to be found before September 2005. With all of this, it was frequently believed that Timebomb only had six episodes, until the announcement of the revival in 2017 where it was publicly revealed that the series had already been filmed in advance and in secret.

Following the success of the series, it was repeated multiple times in the years to come. The first time was in February and March 2006, to mark the series being released on DVD, then again in 2008 when it was re-released with additional special features. The third time was in August 2013 as a single omnibus outing as part of Toffa's 10th anniversary, with the fourth in June and July 2015 to mark the series' 10th anniversary. As Toffa was being broadcast in HD at this point, it was upscaled and remastered to 1080p. It was repeated again in December 2017, this time as three hour-long episodes in the run-up to Timebomb: Earth in Ruins beginning the following month. On New Years' Day 2022, the original series was reshown along with *Earth in Ruins*, as a two-hour show named *Timebomb: Essentials* in the run-up to *Timebomb: Sherbert* airing the following week. By this point, it was announced that the series was to be remastered, with updated model and visual effects, and being upscaled to 4K, becoming one of Toffa's first programmes in this format. The remastered version aired over six weeks in June and July 2022.