If you're seeking the visual novel, head to Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors or its series Zero Escape.
NINE-NINE, NINE! Tonight on 999...
999 (also known as 999 Lifesavers and 999 International) is a British docudrama TV series that was shown on The BBC from 1992 to 2003. It was presented by the newsreader Michael Buerk and was the British equivalent to Rescue 911.
A similar, more child-friendly series called Against All Odds ran on CBBC in the early 2000s.
This show contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Whenever a child had to be rescued, it was usually because no-one was watching them at the time.
- And Knowing Is Half the Battle: When it wasn't showing rescues, the series went out of its way to educate the audience on how to deal with all potential dangers.
- Big Damn Heroes: It didn't always fall upon the emergency services to rescue those in peril, one of the most notable examples was the life guards and swimmer who collectively saved the life of a pre-teen girl whose hair was caught in the air filter of a swimming pool jacuzzi, using a combination of underwater resuscitation and a carving knife.
- Bittersweet Ending: Occasionally, one such example was the dog that barked constantly after its owner had fainted and fell off a bridge until a passerby noticed and went to get help, said dog passed away a few months later and posthumously received a life-saver award from the RSPCA.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Lifesavers variant regularly showed reconstructions in which the subjects would ask the audience how to deal with the danger one of said subjects was in with Michael Buerk providing instructions through voiceover.
- Children Are Innocent: Consequently, when they were the ones in danger, they had no prior awareness unless they'd been warned and just ignored said warnings.
- Did Not Think This Through: Sometimes the victims ended up in danger because they didn't recognise the potential risks their actions could lead to.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: The series emphasised that just about everything presented a potential risk to the lives of people and animals.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence: Reconstructions of people and animals ending up in every conceivable dangerous situation.
- Foreshadowing: The clips in the various opening sequences would eventually appear as parts of the reconstructions as the clip of the little girl rescued from being trapped between two walls indicated.
- Also, before each reconstruction, Michael Buerk or Juliet Morris/Donna Bernard would speak from a location and/or pose with an item relevant to what the audience were about to see.
- Free-Range Children: Some rescues came about as a result of children being left unattended and free to do as they pleased.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: How else would the victims end up in danger in the first place?
- Jump Scare: Guaranteed to happen at some point, given the nature of the series as a whole, especially the common occurrence of the signature three-notes that referred to the title in morse code during each episode.
- Killer Gorilla: Averted with the first reconstruction of a child being rescued, the kid in question having fallen into a gorilla pit while on a trip to the zoo.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: A young boy lost one of his new shoes when he had to be rescued from being stuck in mud.
- Mood Whiplash: The reconstructions, once they got to the part where the trouble started, then again when one reconstruction finished and was followed by a preview of the next reconstruction.
- This also applied to the episodes as a whole because one episode would always end with a preview of the following episode as well as an end credits sequence with the theme tune playing over it.
- A 1996 episode featured a reconstruction of an 18-month-old girl choking in her cot and the family cat alerting the tot's parents to the danger with music by Beethoven (after whom the cat was named) playing in the background.
- No Animals Were Harmed: The series once staged a reconstruction of a fire in a horse barn, leading presenter Michael Buerk to add a disclaimer at the end that not only were none of the horses injured during filming, they were all trained performance animals and weren't even scared for real. (And for the record, all the animals involved in the actual fire were safely evacuated and suffered no lasting harm.)
- In general, the series occasionally featured rescues involving animals.
- No One Could Survive That!: Especially so when the victims were rescued from life-threatening situations.
- A 3-year-old boy survived straying on to a railway line and getting zapped by the third rail, only requiring the amputation of his left leg. Luckier still, a train driver who lived nearby saw the kid from a distance and flagged down an oncoming train before it could hit him. Unfortunately, the train driver was so distressed by the incident that he became afraid of trains and retired immediately. It was only years later that both victim and rescuer were able to ride a steam train together.
- Quicksand Sucks: Some segments reconstructed the rescues of children trapped in quicksand-like situations (stuck in deep mud, spoil heaps etc).
- Recurring Element:
- Reconstructions of real-life rescues with testimonies from those involved.
- Michael Buerk's opening line ("Tonight on 999...")
- Scare 'Em Straight: Intentional or not, the series' main priority was to remind the audience just how easily they could end up in danger and to take all the necessary steps to avoid this.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: Attacks by bees and wasps were a common feature in the early years of the series.
- Shown Their Work: The series was as good as any PSA/PIF but still occasionally showed existing examples, most notably the anti-drink-driving special from 1994.
- In 1995, there was an episode featuring a mother who crashed her car into a water dike and escaped by taking steps she'd learned from watching a 1993 episode of the series in which a similar situation was featured.
- Some of the rescues were shown on the televised news, and/or recorded by witnesses, allowing the use of amateur/archive footage. Others were featured in local newspapers.
- In-between reconstructions, the emergency services and other organisations relevant to the episode would explain and demonstrate how they work and what they do as well as reminding the audience to stay safe.
- Suddenly Shouting: Or more to the point, suddenly screaming for help, regardless of whoever was doing the screaming once they realised the danger.
- This Is Gonna Suck: The moment you heard the ticking clock sound effect at the beginning of the theme tune, you just knew what you were about to witness was not good.
- Title Drop: In morse code at the end of the theme tune and Michael Buerk's signature opening line.
- Too Dumb to Live: The 1995 Bonfire Night special emphasized the dangers of pocketing fireworks and using fuel for bonfires by showing reconstructions of people making such mistakes and learning the hard way.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: After every reconstruction, the people involved would talk about how they dealt with the aftermath of their ordeals and were all the wiser as a result.
- Worst Aid: The final season had a segment in which Dr. Catherine Hood tested a public audience on their first aid knowledge. If they made the wrong choice, she would demonstrate why this would be dangerous/fatal in the real world.
