637 Give Us A Break

First  viewed : 22  September  1983

This  is  another  reminder  that  we're  in  snooker's  golden  age  at  this  point. Over  on  Channel  4,  Steve  Davis  had  his  own  late  night  chat  show  A  Frame  With  Davis  around  this  same  time.

Give  Us  A  Break    was  a  mixture  of   Minder  and  The  Hustler. Robert  Lindsay  played  Micky  Noades, a  dodgy  entrepreneur  very  much  in  the  Arthur  Daley  mould  shacked  up  with  girlfriend  Tina  ( Shirin  Taylor  who  must  have  been  relieved  to  put  her  bra  back  on  after  The  Cleopatras ) .Down  on  his  luck  he  discovers  that  her  kid  brother  Mo  ( Paul  McGann ) is  a  snooker  ace  and  sets  about  exploiting  him.

It's  chiefly  remembered  for  giving  first  breaks ( excuse  the  pun )   to  McGann  and  writer  Geoff  McQueen  who  went  on  to  create  The  Bill. That's  because  it  wasn't  much  cop. The  relationship  between  Micky  and  Mo  was  too  close  to  Arthur  and  Terry  in  Minder  with  Lindsay's  character  so  unsympathetic  you  never  really  rooted  for  him. It  was  billed  as  a  comedy  drama  but  the  laughs  were  well  spaced  out , usually  coming   at  the  end  of  a  laborious  set-up.

A  second  series  was  planned  but  negative  reaction  to  the  first  meant  this  was  reduced  to  a  single  one-off  episode  in  1984  to  tie  up  the  loose  ends.