Phoo Action

Phoo Action is an hour long TV pilot created by Jamie Hewlett for BBC Three. It was one of six pilots broadcasted on the channel in early 2008, premiering on February 12 2008 and only airing on the channel once. Phoo Action is based on Jamie Hewlett’s 1996 The Face magazine comic strip Get The Freebies. Phoo Action starred Jaime Wineston as Whitey Action, Eddie Shin as Terry Phoo, and Carl Weathers as Police Chief Benjamin ‘Ben’ Benson. The music for Phoo Action was composed by Damon Albarn at Studio 13, under the alias Nomad al Arban. Murdoc’s voice actor Phil Cornwell is the voice of the pilot’s lead antagonist Jimmy Freebie.

Set in London, England in 2012, the show stars disgruntled teenaged action-heroine Whitey Action and gay kung-fu cop Terry Phoo as they team up to form a crime fighting duo who thwart the mutant minions of The Freebies Gang.

The pilot was originally set to become a six part miniseries in 2009, but the series was canceled at the last minute as soon as production was due to start.

Plot
After The Queen is killed by an unidentified group of mutants, Whitey guesses that a group of mutants in London called The Freebies are the culprits behind the murder, while the forces of her father Ben Benson, a New Yorker who is the London Chief of Police, is focused in particular on a single ‘mutant insurgent’ suspect. Lord Rothwell, Benson’s boss calls in Terry Phoo, a highly trained combat cop from Hong Kong JKD police force who is particularly skilled in fighting mutants, despite his very poor investigative skills.

Meanwhile, The Freebies are reprimanded for killing The Queen by an ominous organization of characters called the Star Chamber, who wanted The Freebies to simply mutate The Queen, not kill her. However, The Freebies are given a final chance, and are ordered to mutate Prince William before he’s given the crown. Later, at a party in a nightclub owned by The Freebies, Action sees Prince William and Harry being chased away by The Freebies. This leads to Whitey causing a scene, which prevents the two from being captured, although it leads to Whitey being arrested by Terry Phoo in the process. However, Whitey convinces Phoo that she’s a special agent and he brings her to his hotel room, where she discovers a case containing Buddha’s loincloth which becomes a pair of hotpants and she tries them on. Phoo is caught off guard after Whitey pulls a giant chocolate egg and the legend of a ‘Chosen One’ out of the hotpants. This leads Terry to believe that that she is the Chosen One.

Phoo and Action band to save the Princes from The Freebies plot to mutate them, and to have the lead mutant Jimmy Freebie to have the throne. In the end, they fail, and William begins to mutate as he is crowned, with the Star Chamber and The Freebies’s plots succeeding despite Phoo & Action’s fight to stop it.

Cast

 * Eddie Shin as Terry Phoo
 * Jaime Winestone as Whitey Action
 * Carl Weathers as Ben Benson
 * Danny Webb as Lord Rothwell
 * Richard Ng as Sifu Chien
 * Phil Cornwell as Jimmy Freebie
 * Steve Haze as Marlon Freebie
 * Spencer Wilding as Burk Freebie
 * Ed Weeks as William
 * Theo Cross as Harry
 * Talulah Riley as Lady Elenor Rigsby
 * Geraldine James as Dr. Evelyne Conan-Bell
 * Andrew Brooke as Sgt. C

Trivia

 * Jimmy Freebie, the main antagonist of the pilot, can be seen living in Gorillaz' Kong Studios in the halls near Russel's room.
 * El Mañana was played during a scene in this pilot.
 * Damon Albarn wrote and recorded all of the musical score for this pilot at Studio 13. He is mentioned as the composer in the credits of the pilot under the pseudonym Nomad al Arban.
 * This is the second project by Jamie Hewlett that Phil Cornwell has been involved with, serving as the voice actor for the pilot's lead villain Jimmy Freebie.