Tag: Bernard Hepton

Classic TV Review: Secret Army

For anyone who may have cast an inquisitive or nostalgic eye over my review for the TV show Colditz last September, this piece will probably come as no surprise. I did, after all, say it was highly likely I would bring this show up again. Classic British TV pretty much sums Secret Army up.

It was created by Gerard Glaister (that’s the link with Colditz) jointly by the BBC and the Belgian BRT (now VRT) and it originally aired between September ’77 and December ’79 just about at the time my parents ushered me off to bed. I can well remember being awed by – and a little bit afraid of – the atmospheric and rather bleak opening titles and that wonderful, almost Rachmaninoff-like theme tune which does such a fine job of setting the tone for the show. Alan Jeapes, whose other credits include Eastenders, won a BAFTA for his efforts with these opening (and presumably closing) titles while Robert Farnon, who also wrote the music for more than forty films including Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. gave us the theme tune.

Secret Army is a story about a fictional resistance movement in Belgium during the Second World War called ‘Lifeline’. Loosely based on the real life ‘Comet line’ which helped allied soldiers and airmen return to Britain via France and Spain and on through Gibraltar, there is a realism to the show that makes it totally engaging. Indeed, Glaister, who was an RAF pilot during the war and would later be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his services as a photo reconnaissance pilot in the Western Desert, drew on his experiences as inspiration for the series.

The Café Candide is the main setting of the show and it is run by Albert Foiret (Bernard Hepton) and acts as the hub for the characters. It is the Rovers Return (apologies for another soap reference) of the show, where meetings take place and information is passed that drives the plots. The café is situated somewhere around Brussels where the locals as well as the occupying Nazi forces frequent the place while Albert covertly helps Lisa Colbert (Jan Francis) – a doctor’s assistant by day and a leader of the resistance by night – run ‘Lifeline’. Other members of this ‘secret army’ abound such as the waitress Natalie (Juliet Hammond-Hill) and Albert’s mistress Monique (Angela Richards). If this scenario is beginning to ring bells, then those bells are most probably chiming the theme tune to the sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo!, which was a hugely popular but dare I say it, rather idiotic, parody of Secret Army, which ran from 1982-92.

The rest of the characters are either locals, fellow collaborators like S.O.E. Officer Flight Lieutenant John Curtis (Christopher Neame), Nazis or allied officers trying to get back to Blighty and it’s the job of the resistance to make that happen. Of course, there would be no tension if there wasn’t the opposing force and therefore, it’s the job of Major Brandt (Michael Culver) and Sturmbannführer Ludwig Kessler (Clifford Rose) to capture every single evader, unearth every safe-house and to close down the evasion line. And therein lies the game of cat and mouse, the show’s recipe for excitement, as one side always tries to gain the upper hand on the other. But it’s a game that costs lives.

I can’t tell you what happens to the characters as the show progresses through its 43 episodes (3 seasons) because I haven’t seen them all yet. But what I have seen has been enough to make me cross my fingers and hope that it gets a rerun on TV soon. There’s nothing gratuitous in the writing, as there is with many contemporary shows; it’s just damn fine storytelling inspired by real-life events. In fact, according to the trivia on IMDB, every one of the scripts were based on real events and thoroughly researched to the point that on more than one occasion, the BBC had to reject a script on the basis that it was deemed too accurate and therefore potentially upsetting to audiences or too politically sensitive. How’s that for reality TV.

 

Classic TV Review: Colditz

A consequence of writing last month’s article about the 1970’s TV show, The Aphrodite Inheritance is that I’ve found myself pondering nostalgically over what else my parents would have sat down to of an evening once us kids were tucked up in bed. What else might they have watched that I was too young for that I would now find enthralling? The answer is, the more I delve the more I find. And the amazing thing with modern access to information is that it’s so easy to discover. A simple Internet search brought a flood of memories back with opening titles I’d only glimpsed before through the balustrades as I reluctantly made my way upstairs to my room and theme tunes that I’d heard only from afar as I lay in the dark waiting for sleep to whisk me away to some childhood dreamland.

One such show was Colditz, a gritty WWII drama co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios. It originally aired between 1972 and ’74 with 28 episodes over two seasons and I well remember the opening sequence and the music. But it was on at bedtime and I never got to watch it. Of course there’s a very good chance that had I been permitted to watch it, I wouldn’t have understood what it was all about anyway but that’s the beauty of rediscovering things years later and I have to say – I’m extremely glad I have. Because it’s terrific television.

For those of you unfamiliar with the name Colditz, it was the prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and the place where Allied officers were sent if they were pains in the neck, i.e. prone to repeatedly escape from other camps. It was designated Oflag IV-C (Oflag being short for Offizierslager which means “officers camp”) and was situated in a thousand year old castle on a rocky outcrop overlooking the town of Colditz in Saxony. Its outer walls were seven feet thick and protecting it on one side was a sheer drop of two hundred and fifty feet to the Mulde river below. The Nazis considered it to be escape-proof but history tells us otherwise.

The first three episodes of this 50 minute show introduce three of the central characters and their subsequent capture by the Germans early in the war. Capt. Pat Grant (Edward Hardwicke), Flt. Lt. Simon Carter (David McCallum) and Lt. Dick Player (Christopher Neame) prove themselves to be problematic prisoners for the Nazis by their numerous attempts to escape. They are therefore finally sent to Germany’s maximum security facility where “escape is impossible”. The fourth episode finally takes us to Colditz after the capture of Flt. Lt. Phil Carrington (Robert Wagner) and from then on the series deals with the relationships between prisoners of various nationalities and their German captors as well as the prisoners’ constant attempts to escape. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Great Escape, it’s a bit like that only not as spectacular but a good deal grittier and more realistic.

Indeed, the technical consultant on the series was Major Pat Reid (the character portrayed by Edward Hardwicke being based on him) who was in real life the British Escape Officer at Colditz. He was one of the few who actually managed to successfully escape from the castle and after the war he went on to write about his experiences in two best-selling books which in turn would go on to be the basis of a film (The Colditz Story directed by Guy Hamilton in 1955), this TV show and a popular board game in the early ’70s. The majority of the events depicted in the series have some basis in reality and while all character names are fictitious, many of them are based, albeit loosely, on actual people. It therefore gives the show a very “real” feel.

This accuracy in the writing together with generally superb performances from all the actors is what makes this TV show one of the most riveting I’ve seen in a long time. Jack Hedley who plays Lt. Col. John Preston, the Senior British Officer and therefore the man who assumes full responsibility for the British prisoners does a fine job with his role. His stoicism and command of his men is a thing of beauty as is his respect for their wishes and duties. His relationship with the camp Kommandant (masterfully played by Bernard Hepton) is wonderfully multi-layered and as such, a very interesting one to see evolve when the two men share the screen.

But in all honesty, I nitpick by naming certain actors. The entire ensemble is spot on. The scripts are intelligent and always within the realms of reality thereby easily impressing upon the viewer how life would have been for those military men forced to wait out the war behind lock and key far from their homes and loved ones.

Gerard Glaister, who together with Brian Degas created the show, was a flyer in the RAF during the war and would go on to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his duties. Originally training as an actor at RADA, he would draw on his wartime experiences many times throughout his career as writer/producer with a number of other TV shows set during and after the Second World War. One of these was yet another series I remember glimpsing the opening titles to as I trudged reluctantly upstairs to bed – Secret Army and I may well review that at some point in the near future. I caught one fragmented episode on YouTube and loved it.

With today’s TV schedules crammed full of inane “follow some weird individual with a camcorder and make a reality TV star out of them” nonsense (there are exceptions of course with some very good series currently produced), I find it a refreshing change to seek out the programmes my parents would have tuned into. Turns out they had some pretty good stuff to watch. It also explains why they insisted on me being in bed at a certain time.

And there I was thinking they simply wanted me to get a good night’s sleep. Early to bed and early to rise…yeah whatever!