Back during The Great War, Indy once covered the WW1 season of the British sitcom series Blackadder.
I was wondering if he could do the same favour to the British sitcom series 'Allo 'Allo, which is set in occupied France.
So listen carefully I shall say this only once.
How (in)accurate is the depiction of the resistance, the wehrmacht and general life in France during occupation in the show. I would also like to know your opinions on it as well as your favourite quote from the series.
Well for one it is a Comedy based on the very nasty and realistic TV Series Secret Army which was so tense that it had a huge audience here.
Allo Allo in the eighties WAS very controversial and there were veterans who loved it and who hated it. But the characters are largely the same (well no Gruber as I guess he was in a German concentration camp). But to be serious my grandparents were freaked out and my grandmother told later that a German asked to translated something in French, did it well and the German told here that a mistake would have her put in a concentration camp (she was 19-20 at the time). So Secret Army was a scary series. And plays in Brussels not Paris
Not in the least accurate. There were some live-and-let-live occupation parts, but there were also down-and-dirty-kill-each-other parts. Some French collaborated, but the others could not forget that there were a conquered people; conquered after a long and obscenely destructive war - WWI.
That said, it was funny; wordplay on the level of “are you being served”, and the French always in the end outthought and outmanuevered Germans. There were sendups of a lot of WWII movie cliches - like “Dad’s Army” did. And Lt. Grueber’s mis-wording was right out of the Benny Hill/Two Ronnies tradition. (for instance “the fallen madonna with the big boobies.”)
In the US, the equivalent show was “Hogan’s Heros”, in which the Germans were always stupid and gullible (at the insistence of John Banner - Schultz and Werner Klemperer - Klink, who were both Jewish.). The show made fun of the Germans. There were a lot of people who hated it because it had Germans in German uniforms in it, but the following generation (my own) saw it for what it was - taking down the Germans as superior in any way.
I only got to see Hogans Heroes in the 80s on Sky Channel that is a UK international channel we got on cable. Before that we only could get what was in range of the communaly paid TV Antenna. Allo Allo was on Dutch TV and subtitled like everything else and that was hilarious. Hogans heroes was not and maybe because it was about a POW camp. We did have Colditz but that was clearly serious.
Some of the casts are still touring. Gruber/Helga. Herr Flick the Gullible German GESTAPO guy who takes himselves VERY serious is actually available for autographs tomorrow and many other dates. The tend to bring the bing sausage, the painting of the madonna and other stuff https://www.rostercon.com/en/people/richard-gibson-en
