The Piglet Files is a British sitcom produced by

London Weekend Television London Weekend Television (LWT) (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 un ...

(LWT). The show consisted of three series totalling 21 episodes that ran between 7 September 1990 and 10 May 1992. The programme follows the life of reluctant

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...

agent Peter "Piglet" Chapman as he tries to instruct his fellow agents on the finer points of

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

gadgetry while keeping his wife Sarah in the dark about his new career.

Plot

In the early 1990s, during the intervening period between the

fall of the Berlin Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain and one of the series of eve ...

and the

collapse of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

combats the Soviet spies within the United Kingdom while facing their own agents' ineptitude, and the ridicule of the sheer fact that the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

is no longer a threat; but MI5 knows better and indeed the Soviets are intent on making trouble. In an effort to alleviate their agents' incompetence,

hires local university teacher Peter Chapman, convincing him by getting him sacked from the university, which leaves him no choice. His new bosses, Maurice Drummond and Andrew Maxwell, assign him to the technology division, and he insists on having a codename, to further his identity in the world of spying. The first codenames listed were Panda, then Panther, but those are already in use, they then incorrectly stated that Puma was the next available name before correcting themselves and assigning Peter the next name..."Piglet." Piglet routinely joins the other field agents on missions—mainly to ensure that MI5 gets its equipment back. Peter "Piglet" Chapman must now face down Soviet

assassins An assassin is a person who commits targeted murder. Assassin may also refer to: Origin of term * Someone belonging to the medieval Persian Ismaili order of Assassins Animals and insects * Assassin bugs, a genus in the family ''Reduviida ...

and

double agents In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organ ...

while keeping his identity as an MI5 technician secret from everyone else, including his wife Sarah.

Characters

*Peter "Piglet" Chapman –

Nicholas Lyndhurst Nicholas Simon Lyndhurst (born 20 April 1961) is an English actor. He began his career as a child actor and became best known for his role as Rodney Trotter in the sitcom ''Only Fools and Horses'' (1981–2003). He also had major roles in other ...

*Major Maurice Drummond –

Clive Francis Clive Francis (born 26 June 1946) is a British stage, television and film actor. Early life Francis was born in Eastbourne, Sussex. He is the son of actors Raymond Francis and his second wife Margaret Towner. His father played Detective Chief ...

*Major Andrew Maxwell –

John Ringham John Henry Ringham (10 February 1928 – 20 October 2008) was a British actor who appeared on both television and stage. Among his roles was that of Norman Warrender in the 1980s sitcom ''Just Good Friends''. Early life Ringham was born in Che ...

*Dexter – Michael Percival *Sarah Chapman –

Serena Evans Serena Evans (born 2 December 1959 in London, England) is a British actress who is best known for playing Police Sergeant Patricia Dawkins in the sitcom '' The Thin Blue Line'' which was shown on BBC1 from 1995 to 1996. She also had a regular r ...

*Flint – Louise Catt *Lewis – Steven Law *Trueman – Paul Cooper

Series overview

Episodes

Series 1 (1990)

Series 2 (1991)

Series 3 (1992)

DVD release

All three series of ''The Piglet Files'' are available on DVD, through Network.

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Piglet Files, The 1990s British sitcoms 1990 British television series debuts 1992 British television series endings English-language television shows ITV sitcoms London Weekend Television shows MI5 in fiction Television series by ITV Studios