It ran for 4 seasons from April 1995 through to August 1998, although the last two episodes were delayed until August 1999!
In true Bond style, lots of different directors contributed to the series, and it evan saw one of the main characters "Ed" replaced by a different actor in the final season (Steven Houghton took over from Craig McLachlan).
The Characters
Bugs used primarily 3 characters:
Beckett - the ex-government intel man, leader of the independent "security" outfit("Bond part 1")
Ed - the action hero ("Bond part 2")
Ros - the techy ("Q")
It was later added with some recurring staff:
Jan - ("M") joined at the end of season 2 where Beckett has to sign his independent team into the control of government organisation "Bureau Two".
At the end of season 3 we are introduced to Alex, obviously to boost the girlie numbers, a female version of the early Ed character - complete with martial arts.
Structure
Bug's shows took a lot of structure from Bond. Each episode had it's very own teaser sequence, followed by the main credits. If it wasn't a 2-parter is also usually had a "double" climax, where after the villian's plot is foiled, usually one of the team is left in danger needing rescuing.
Allies
Along with Jan from Bureau Two, members of the team had several allies in different organisations and departments which came in handy from time to time. Much like the Bond films, most of the stories used a past relationship/friendship with someone outside the organisation as the key to the success of their missions. They also had a habit of turning rogue in later rendezvous :-)
Channing, an entrepreneurial businessman was the main recurring ally, often funding Ros' projects
Organisations
The series' uinderlying thread was the role of secret intelligence agencies, and the team's position within or outside of them. Amusingly, the series' portrail of how these agencies operate, their scurrilous behaviour, is a lot more closer to the ruth than EON's depiction of MI6.
Beckett outside SSD HQ - "Their methods are not exactly cutting edge, relying often on numbers and brute force to get the job done"
Villians
The show featured quite a few recurring villians, and none bigger than Jean-Daniel, a Blofeld character if ever there was one. The show also used an impressive cast for one off appearences, a lot of the actors going on to bigger things.
Jean-Daniel plots more dastardly doings as he also admires the team's results from afar - before tryig to kill them
Capers
The capers usually revolved around money. Blackmail and corproate espionage were the main threads up until Season 3, where the team were then assigned to Government work, which usually revolved around weapons technology.
Beckett find himself in a weapons bunker, which the British Government thought best to hide under London
Vehicles
Following the Bond tradition, each show seemed to include a different vehicle. From Ros' super car, to Mini's, Russian warhead transporters, helicopters (which usually blew-up), submarines and trains, there was always something for the team to play with.
The twins and the supercar from the episode featuring the blackmail of R&D firm "Tronix".
Special Effects
Although this was a BBC funded production (remember the Dr Who effects? :-) ), the SFX dept did pretty well in blowing most things up every episode.
A "Kabooom" from Season 1
Nods To Bond
The series often used nods to the Bond movies, depending on the writer. They usually took the form of non-story-critical scenes, which were just used to flesh out characters. However, the biggest parody of Bond was in Season 2, where Ed acompanies an STA (read NASA) satellite launching misson, and maybe improves on Moonraker :-P
TMWTGG anyone? :-)
Conclusion
Although Bugs was a cheap and poorly budgetted BBC show, it did pretty well to keep up fast moving tight stories and a fairly polished appearence.
EON could even be accused of borrowing a few things from past stories, the end TWINE looks decidedly like the ep 4 of season 1 (submarine) and TWINE's briefing sequence is so like Cyberax's holographic appearence (season 3) you'll be shocked.
In fact most of TWINE can be seen in episodes of Bugs which preceeded it.
Somthing TWINEish
I for one would welcome a return, but it looks like the Beeb have thought of this already, and changed the title to "Spooks" and given it an MI5 flavour (the show starts on Monday 13th May on BBC1 at 9pm).
Fan Fiction authors might want to take a look at http://www.bugs.co.uk
as there are a lot of good ideas for Bond untapped in there. There are also some scrpt excerpts from Season 1 & 2.