[1] It was written by Jim Eldridge and starred Paul Kember as the eponymous hero, Brian Arthur Derek (BAD) Boyes, a mischievous schoolboy who had a tendency to get himself into trouble and consequently had a series of misadventures.
As for his parents – his kindly but weak-willed father (Dean Harris) was always completely fooled by his son's innocent facade, but his abrasive mother (Susan Jameson) rather less so – it rarely took her long to get to the bottom of her son's devilish plots, and her war-cry of "Bri-an!"
In addition, a pre-Birds of a Feather Linda Robson appeared in a few early episodes as Miss King, a teacher and would-be love-interest for Wiggis at the school, and Sam Kelly and Christine Ozanne appeared as the Boyes' near-neighbours Mr and Mrs Worple, whose cats Brian tried to look after while the couple were on holiday, with predictably disastrous consequences.
Writer Jim Eldridge and his son, Duncan Eldridge, had created a character for the "Diary of X" sections of their successful How To Handle Grown-Ups series of children's books which detailed the exploits of an anonymous schoolboy's many schemes, dodges and scrapes.
[4][5] However, plans for a Christmas one-off episode and a third series were shelved, reportedly at recommendation of then-Director-General of the BBC Sir Michael Checkland to Head of Children's Programming Anna Home and following several letters from parents on Points of View voicing concern that, whilst Brian Boyes was mostly seen as mischievous but harmless in the vein of Dennis the Menace and various other 'naughty schoolboy' characters from over the years, the character and his endless manipulative schemes, and the lies he told to get away with them, were very seldom seen to have any sort of comeuppance or redemption beyond the occasional telling off – or risk of – from his mother, with concern that this conduct, without illustrated effect of punishment or correction, could be viewed as setting a bad example to young viewers.