Punters (aka Joey and Spansky) |
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Last Update: 16 June 2004 (You need a browser capable of viewing tables to see this page properly) |
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| Punters is a comedy play set in South Yorkshire in 1978, where two young school leavers try their luck at the race track and pick winners. |
| Joey (Mick Ward) is uncomplicated extrovert. He wants money, sex and freedom (not necessarily in that order) and is doing well on all three fronts. |
| Spansky (Tom Davidson) is a bookish lad who has left school for a job as a groundsman at an ancient monument. By studying form and placing surreptitious bets, he has maintained a winning streak that has laid a nice fat bankroll under his pillow. Reluctantly, he agrees to go into a betting partnership with his old mate, Joey. |
| Horseracing for Joey is just a cash flow problem: easy come, easy go, boom or bust flutters. Spansky, on the other hand, talks of racing as a thing of "Glory and grandeur, not just a betting opportunity." The betting for him is something else -- applied mathematics. |
| Punters is an intricate and fascinating portrait of a gambler -- not showing an old failure who cannot stop backing horses -- but a young success who does stop (much to the fury of his uncomprehending friend). |
| The Epilogue finds Joey as a family man amiably enjoying his wife's earnings and Spansky as an earnest university maths student. |
| Sean can be spotted in a scene that takes place in a disco. He has several lines. |
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| Filmed in Doncaster, production began on 05 February 1984 and ended on 01 March 1984. |
| PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS: |
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Mick Ward |
Joey Spansky Lurch |
| PRODUCTION CREDITS: |
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Genre |
Comedy/TV Film BBC |
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Producer |
Andrée Molyneaux |
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Directed by |
Chris Menaul Stephen Wakelam |
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Transmitted |
27 November 1984 70 minutes |
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