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The New Statesman Season 2 Episodes
Season 2 Episode Guide
8 Episodes 1989 - 1990
Episode 1
Fatal Extraction
25 mins
B'stard discovers that thee is oil under Hackney marshes but the land belongs to the borough of Hackney and the only person from whom he can buy it is the borough's black, feminist, Left wing leader Georgina Pitt, with whom he fell out in a televised debate. In order for the borough to pass to the conservatives, giving him the oil rights he devises to plan to get working class Labour voters to support him by promising to waive their poll tax if they surrender their franchise. However Georgina gets wind of the plan, sells the land to herself and retires to a private island though B'stard makes some money by blackmailing the Chief Whip, who is a closet gay.
Episode 2
Live from Westminster
25 mins
Television cameras are brought into the House of Commons to broadcast events and B'stard milks the situation, becoming a television personality, appearing on game shows and advertising products. At the same time Sarah sells her memoirs - outlining her husband's sordid ways - to a gutter press newspaper. B'stard asks Mrs. Thatcher to intervene to stop its publication but she refuses, believing he should be cut down to size. Eventually he gets Piers to help him blow up the warehouse where the tabloids are being stored by telling him that they are running a damaging story about the prime minister.
Episode 3
The Wapping Conspiracy
24 mins
"Times" reporter Ronald Barrett names and shames B'stard as a filthy pervert who has sex with underage girls, so B'stard sues him and takes him to court and Sarah must take on the devoted-spouse-by-his-side role. When Piers proves to be a useless prosecutor, B'stard conducts his own cross-examination, getting Barrett to admit that he doctored the photos, which are all false, because he was jealous of B'stard. B'stard wins substantial damages, but afterwards it transpires that the entire case was a money-making scam between Barrett and B'stard, though when Barrett threatens to declare the fact, B'stard sues him for defamation of character.
Episode 4
The Haltemprice Bunker
25 mins
Journalist Piers Lonsdale tells B'stard that there are rewards for catching former Nazi war criminals so B'stard decides to turn in one of his constituents, elderly ex-Nazi Hans Drucker, whose bungalow walls boast wartime memorabilia with pictures of Hitler and Thatcher alongside each other. Drucker promises to give B'stard half a million pounds in Nazi gold to let him escape and the two men meet at the railway station. However Lonsdale has tipped off the media to attend and in the confusion Drucker gets pushed in front of a train. B'stard fails to get his money or indeed any credit for exposing a Nazi as Mrs Thatcher has banned the press from publishing adverse stories about Conservative members of parliament.
Episode 5
California Here I Come
25 mins
B'stard, with Piers in tow, flies to Hollywood to pitch the idea of a Parliament-based soap opera to producer Houghton Mifflin, who rejects it. B'stard's luck changes when actress Donna Nightingale invites him in for sex, but he gets locked out of her house in his underwear while fetching her tranquilizers from her car and is arrested for indecent exposure and attempted burglary. Piers comes to bail him out but is also arrested for possession of cocaine, the inhalation of which turns him into a violent Royalist, so when B'stard goads the sheriff into calling a gay prisoner "an ugly old queen", Piers attacks him and the pair escape and rush back to England.
Episode 6
May the Best Man Win
24 mins
Piers is marrying the attractive, dominant Clarissa and asks B'stard to be his best man. Clarissa ends up having sex with B'stard though she is critical of his technique and makes it clear that after she marries Piers, she will do all she can to stop B'stard from using him as his lackey. B'stard then makes several attempts to kill Clarissa, though they all fail and the wedding goes ahead. However, he has the last laugh by ensuring that all the guests go down with food poisoning.
Episode 7
Piers of the Realm
25 mins
Returning to London from a surgery where he has rooked several constituents, B'stard is shocked to find that Piers is now junior minister to the minister for the environment, Sir Greville MacDonald, and his anger causes him to be even more vile than usual: he destroys Piers' teddy bear, films Sarah having sex with the gardener and threatens to sell the video, and informs reporter Geoff Diquead that a horse race in which he lost money was fixed. He also discovers that buildings listed for conservation are brothels owned by Sir Greville and attempts to blackmail him. So when he is shot by an anonymous assailant, there are several suspects.
Episode 8
Who Shot Alan B'Stard?
60 mins
B'stard recovers in hospital in time to cast the deciding commons vote to bring back capital punishment and even gains the contract to have the new gallows built. Sarah rightly guesses that the supposed assassination attempt was a fraud and that B'stard had bet that hanging would be restored, gaining a sizeable cash sum. When B'stard promotes a new charity, Sarah teams up with TV chat show host Kerry Grout to expose him at the same time that Piers discovers how the fake assassination was carried out but unfortunately kills Kerry while demonstrating it. B'stard is charged with the murder and hanged on the gallows, but since the contractor he hired used balsa wood and not mahogany, it collapses. This is seen as an act of God and he receives a free pardon.