There really has been an explosion of dark brooding European dramas on our television screens of late. I watched an excellent example recently. It was the tale of a French anti-hero navigating the moral complexities of the German occupation in the midst of the second World War.
A café owner working for the Resistance, he has a faithful wife but also employs several young waitresses who are understandably drawn to him. It is true to say that for our brooding moustachioed protagonist, war is an erotic playground.
He is a complicated man. He conspires with Nazi officers to steal priceless artworks while simultaneously protecting British airman from capture. Reality is a cosmic joke to this world-weary Resistance philosopher and he regularly breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to the camera, much like Frank Underwood in House of Cards and President Michael D Higgins in everyday life.
In Saturday’s episodes, a beret-wearing resistance contact arrives with news. She is taciturn and doesn’t like to repeat herself. She explains that a contact will arrive soon with sticks of dynamite concealed in sausages in “a special compartment in his trousers”. Meanwhile a corrupt German army officer arrives in his “little tank” to reveal that he has hidden priceless paintings in some sausages in his own trousers, and a third man arrives with news that he has a new battery for the secret radio. This too is concealed in a sausage in his trousers, such is the French style. The outcome of such interweaving plotlines is arguably as unpredictable as war itself.
Elsewhere a stern Gestapo man has disguised himself as a lady stenographer for reasons too complicated to go into. Suffice it to say, it is very sexy. And speaking of sexy, who can forget the dashing Italian army officer? “We Italians don’ta wanta make-a no a trouble,” he says, memorably evoking the temperament of his people. “We make-a the pasta, we make-a the love and we sing!”
No translation
Apologies for presenting that in Italian with no translation. So compelling is this programme that by the end of the episode I could perfectly understand Italian, French and German without even glancing at the subtitles (I presume there were subtitles). Anyway, this eurodramatic sensation is called 'Allo 'Allo! and it airs two episodes at a time every Saturday on Gold.
'Allo 'Allo! is not really a dark brooding European drama (I wish it was. I would love to see Lars von Trier's 'Allo 'Allo!). It is, in fact, a classically broad 1980s UK sitcom of the "aren't Europeans silly?" variety. It's still funny – knowingly formulaic and camp – but also, disappointingly but unsurprisingly, sporadically homophobic. In retrospect, it's quite a weird programme. Nowadays, for some reason, it's hard to imagine setting a prime-time family sitcom set during the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century.
That said, when trying to come to terms with Tory Euroscepticism, you could do worse than watch a few episodes. Rene's café is basically how your typical Tory nativist sees the European parliament. It might be even more useful though, to watch Nick Robinson's Europe: 'Them' or 'Us'? (Tuesday, BBC2), an excellently forensic look at the history of Britain's involvement with the European project. It's filled with historical news footage and detailed interviews from many now-deceased but delightfully verbose politicians and policy wonks, and it begins and ends with Robinson striding the White Cliffs of Dover possessively.
The first episode (the second airs next week) examines how Britain’s official policy to Europe evolved from patronising disinterest in the 1950s, to a desire to join in the 1960s, through a depressed desperation after being rejected by the French that led to backroom channel chats in France and a heavily stage-managed parliamentary vote in 1973.
And now they're there, like those tea-drinking British airmen in 'Allo 'Allo!, secreted in the cupboard while all the real action is happening out in the café.
Gone very awry
Dystopian sci-fi show Colony (Thursday, Sky) is also quite like 'Allo 'Allo!. There's an occupying force that favours red, white and black banners and a resistance fighter who runs a café/bar. On the other hand, because it's an American programme in which the "rest of the world" means "a bit of Mexico", everyone on it has an American accent and there isn't a comedy Italian in sight.
It's only the latest high- concept show in which things have gone very awry in the Americas. There have been a lot of these – The Walking Dead, The Man in the High Castle, The Last Man on Earth, V. It's like the normally mute US entertainment industry is trying to tell us something. ("What's that Skippy? Timmy's fallen down the well? What's that Skippy? A culture of rugged individualism and illogical exceptionalism has led to a choice between neo-feudalistic kleptocracy and populist demagoguery?")
In Colony, we can see that things are askew from the start. A US invasion has led to black market trading, home-grown food and streets that are filled with bikes rather than cars (For Americans, flea markets, market gardens and bike-riding looks chillingly dystopian, as opposed to "like Holland"). More importantly there's also a massive wall running through the town, an unseen alien race governing America via a Vichy-style proxy government (a significant percentage of Americans believe this is already the case), and an army of lethal drones.
Our heroes are a former army ranger Will (Lost's Josh Holloway), who has been conscripted to become a policeman for the police state, and his wife Katie (The Walking Dead's Sarah Wayne Callies), who is a freedom fighter/terrorist/resistance member/keen cyclist. There are echoes of every conceivable hot-button issue here – terrorism, drones, healthcare, inequality, green zones, migration – although it's unclear what questions the programme makers are actually asking with such references (possibly a needy: "what question do you think we're asking?").
Luckily, in the foreground there are chase scenes and rugged jaws and machine-gun wielding robots. And towards the end of this week’s episode, Katie informs her resistance contact of an upcoming arrest.
She picks up the payphone. “Listen vary carefully,” she says. “I will say zis only once.”
