Give Us A Break

1 9 8 3 (UK)

This BBC series – set around the snooker halls of London – threatened to be the best of its kind since Budgie.

Wide-boy Micky Noades (Robert Lindsay), a would-be fixer/manager whose previous schemes have all failed, discovers that his Liverpool girlfriend Tina (Shirin Taylor) has a kid brother (Paul McGann) who can play snooker like nobody’s business.

Micky – who calls everyone “uncle” – sees the opportunity of making money by becoming Mo’s manager, but the road to success proves to be full of pitfalls and dangers.

Despite the BBC clichés (McGann’s red and white bobble hat of the stereotypical football thug and Lindsay’s trilby were two of the things which were immediately wrong with the series), the script by Geoff McQueen was unusually accurate and full of characters from a real world.

David Daker played Ron Palmer, the landlord of the Crown and Sceptre where Tina works and Micky drinks.

Mo Morris
Paul McGann
Mickey Noades
Robert Lindsay
Tina Morris
Shirin Taylor
Ron Palmer
David Daker
Anna Kirby
Brenda Fricker
Benny
Tony Selby