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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Did you all spot the obvious error in SS-GB last night? That's right, a British resistance movement.
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Hatty
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Having read SS-GB recently it was interesting to compare the telly version. Being Deighton, the question of loyalty is nuanced and there's bound to be some wrong 'uns among your own lot. The programme shows a slapping scene (of women, the brutes) but perhaps it can now dispense with 'background' and get to the German set-up, military and intelligence.

Another recent BBC series is Roots. I remember the dismay when the book, supposedly biographical, was revealed to be fiction but a generation on it's not a problem.
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Mick Harper
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I mildly recommend Bull on the Fox Channel. I mention it here because it has Steven Spielberg as Executive Producer. Just as the late, great Good Wife had Tony Ridley as Executive Producer. Not that these luminaries will have much creative input, but they do provide quality control, which in the case of US TV crime-drams is essential to avoid tedious self-referral (e.g. hero has to investigate old flame in Episode Two).
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Wile E. Coyote


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I couldn't get into SS-GB. It wants to be alternative history, comic book, film noire and yes it even looks the part..... but would you believe it... it still somehow manages to bore the fedora off you.

Jesu....its like a very dull plodding sexless Sin City err without the sharp dialogue and comic over the top violence.

Len Deighton meets Frank Miller and farts.
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Mick Harper
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I know everyone loves to believe that George V consigned cousin Nicky to die at the hands of the Bolsheviks (trotted out once again tonight on House of Windsor) but it's still utter rubbish. There were, let's face it, a hundred and seventy-eight other countries the Romanovs could have gone to.

How wise the Windsors (and/or the British Government) were is illustrated by the flight of the Shah of Iran in 1979. He moved all over the place largely because Jimmy Carter would not admit him entry to the US. Eventually due to some extraordinary machinations on the part of Henry Kissinger and other Shah-groupies, Carter reluctantly let him in on a strictly temporary basis and only for medical treatment. The Iranians immediately stormed the US embassy in Tehran, took everyone hostage and the Americans (not to mention the rest of us) have been living with the consequences ever since.
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Mick Harper
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I was prematurely laudatory about Bull. Episode Four: hero up against old flame. We have all decided to switch over to the Dutch noir, Swingers.
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Wile E. Coyote


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SS-GB (spoiler)

Thinks are getting worse for Doug....he got to punch the David Walliams SS officer (hurrah)....but only because it was what the evil Nazi wanted.

I tell you this is high quality stuff our hero has a sensitive side, to match his rough tough private dick noir side ...we probably should have noticed as he has a haircut out of Brideshead Revisted and appears good at soft porn scenes....

He is also the most intelligent man in England (despite everyone else seeming to know what the hell is going on, and Archer getting tailed everywhere). I worked this one out as every other character keeps on throwing this into the conversation.

You have to feel a bit sad for Doug. The resistance are out to kidnap his child, as they think he is collaborating with the S.S.... err which he is. Fortunately Doug is onto the Resistance as they keep on telling him their plans down the pub, which the SS dont appear to have noticed.....is where your English unload all their problems.....

Even worse Dougs wife has died. Still the sunny side to this is that he is bonking everything. In the first episode the girl got to drape herself in a NAZI flag....Phwoar a bit of S and M.... but.... Doug tells her not to be ridiculous....

This weeks dame, is a mysterious Yank, with a carefully crafted back story....err...I was a cheerleader he was a quarterback (wow) who has become a "war correspondent" and has visited many war zones. (it goes with the job and after all ....there is a world war on). Anyway she is unluckier with her choice of props, as she only gets a green chaise longue and a cushion to cover up in, rather than the Nazi flag. Still by the way wood burner was going.....the sex was good..

Anyway the Yank has met hundreds of guys like Doug all of whom have died.....so presumably Doug is now going to get syphilis to add to his woes.

Or, hang on, maybe her back story is not what it seems? .
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Mick Harper
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Two things about SS-GB that struck me. First off, the sound has been cleaned up (even the Gogglebox folk were complaining). This is significant because the original director had obviously adopted The Wire technique of realistic mumbling to add verisimilitude. Nobody pointed out to him that The Wire was meant to be verisimilitudinous, SS-GB is not (in that sense). Anyway the BBC apparatchiks had clearly sent word down, "Get it sorted" and interference in artistic decision-making by the hierarchy is a bigger heresy in the BBC even than the other way round.

Second of all, I loved all the high-level conspiracy stuff and got extremely bored with a) the love interest b) action scenes c) laborious character setting. Len Deighton never made this error, not anyway in his early books, which include SS-GB. He kept all this stuff to an absolute (but interesting when necessary plot-wise) minimum. 'Harry Palmer' (of the films) was famously not even named in the books never mind given a dead wife, boy at public school blahdiblah. Does anyone remember The Planemakers (and its sequel series, The Power Game) which consisted ninety per cent of people talking across desks? Riveting but we shall not see their like again.

At least SS-GB doesn't make the mistake of Taboo in having the aristo-baddies swearing. Again the trendy director has made the mistake of thinking this adds realism and 'character' to the characters. It does not. It just jars in a BBC Costume Drama. Excellent though and, in other ways, innovatory in the good sense.

PS Archer and the Top Bureaucrat shook with their left hands. This was not alluded to. Since the Met was (probably still is) a Masonic Conspiracy, perhaps Borry could tell us whether this has any significance. Unless telling us would means Borry getting eviscerated and left at high water mark. Especially if ...
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Wile E. Coyote


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SS-GB (spoilers)

How many times can you write the word boring without it becoming boring? My wife spoiled my enjoyment of this episode by declaring she had abandoned.

To be fair in Episode 3, Doug did some deducing, he has figured out its something to do with the atomic reactor. (damn) There was some real action a fight with umbrellas, and the boring normal sexless sex scene with (female A) and..... Doug got mummied, by err the sexy but very traditional childminder (female C)

We start with a beautifully shot sequence of a congregation of Nazi /Soviet types dressed in grey and black and female B (the resistance stunner) draped in a brown red fur exiting swiftly right, only noticed by Doug....Its a tricksy flash foward....what will happen? Were the guards pisssed?

I failed to work this out, I thought she was autograph hunting.....

You then sit there watching the sensational film work, it's all grey brown shadows with dollops of single primary colours for effect. But you are listening to the the worlds crappiest dialogue like " You seem more interested in false bottoms than real bottoms" thats sexyass Braga......to dongle Doug..... which makes you realise that SSGB is neither clever nor noir cool ....that it really aspires to. Or maybe that is the point they have invented a new genre pulp noir, done as err pulp that no bugger wants to read/see?

Anyway 52 minutes later you discover that the resistance have planted a bomb. Geez why didn't I think of that..... a bomb?
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Mick Harper
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he has figured out its something to do with the atomic reactor.

I once pointed out that the multivariate world we have enjoyed since the Birth of Man was in danger once and only once -- when the political entity that first invented The Bomb would be able to exploit this one-time step-change in military-technology to establish its own dominion over said world and then could and undoubtedly would forbid anyone else inventing The Bomb thus being Top Dog Forever.

I further pointed out that the said political entity would clearly be Germany in the mid-twentieth century since that was where all the cutting edge stuff was going on and the cutting edge people were nearly all German-speakers (plus a few nearby Italians and Danes who could be mopped up easily enough) The only thing that would prevent this would be if there happened to be a virulently anti-Semitic regime in power at the time in the political entity since most twentieth century nuclear boffins were German, Italian, Danish and Jewish.

Meanwhile the Great World Spirit had arranged for another political entity to arise that was (by the standards of political entities) remarkably unhegemonic and it was the said unhegemonic state that invented The Bomb but declined to use it for World Dominion just long enough for one other (and then multivariate others) to invent The Bomb.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Well we still keep on getting these Nazis' had (alright almost had... but not quite got) the bomb stories.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2529864/Austria-conduct-search-secret-Nazi-nuclear-weapon-laboratory-hidden-underneath-concentration-camp-complex.html

Orthodoxy says they they were still a way off..... the scientists themselves made out after the war was lost ....that they didn't try too hard (seeing the danger) and nasty Hitler had set his heart on the V2s anyway.

Still not sure ......realistically how many would have admitted to trying full out to develop the Adolf A bomb, but.... failing anyway......
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Wile E. Coyote


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ZZZGB (spoilers)

Episode 4 and the pace is finally picking up, err....if slowly.

Doug takes his loved ones to the unoccupied zone. Which appears to be a road in the middle of nowhere, it's all trees and grass with a big green sign marked Welwyn Garden City. Maybe there was a Premier Inn round the corner... no wonder folks looked glum.

Doug clearly not fancying a couple of years of Full English heads back to the bombed metropolis, where the nasties have taken the resistance Highgate bombing a tad badly. Bastards! They are rightfully arresting suspects including the stunner who did it.. and Archer's man servant who was sympathetic. They also appear to have watched the first three episodes as all the oily conspirators to free the King (operation "Smoking Jacket") and sexy ass Braga also appear done for.

Only one man can save the day. He just needs to show his stiff upper....will he?...won't he? The tension mounts...

NO.... he has gone back to Welwyn Garden City......
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Wile E. Coyote


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ZZZ GB (spoilers?)

Ok I lied....Doug has finally decided, to man up and to risk operation Smoking Jacket..

Could we be in for a belter of a last Episode?

Nooooo, its a road trip with Doug, battered Harry, stunning Sylvia and the drooling monarch dressed in a comedy balaclava, onto their rendezvouz in Dorset ....oh no a dodgy clutch, damn!.... cripes a flat, double damn.....!.etc. It has all the excitement of Genevieve, only with one checkpoint.

Anyway, there are a few neat twists to credit, Huth the SS officer with the crop who keeps on polishing his boots was not after all the Nazi sadist (he just likes uniforms)...The real sadist turns out to be Kellerman (fair play didnt see that coming). Then there was a tense genuinely creepy scene, with some collaborators.

Other than that its all pretty predictable. They were all pawns in a larger game..... dont you know.....Braga smolders her way out. Sylvia of course doesnt.... err she was always the doomed heroine. Harry gamely suffers some more without losing a limb etc.

The only real mystery at the end was why did dull Doug travel to Dartmoor for the last few shots?
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Mick Harper
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They were clearly setting up the sequel without knowing whether it will be re-commissioned. Pretty dire all round. I don't mind German lefty traitors or even German officer Korps traitors (that's proper history) but a German SS traitor is unknown to the files. Weeded by Odessa, I expect.
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Mick Harper
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A remarkable development. On two nights in a row Newsnight has commended (by name!) both Channel 4 News and Sky News for stories they have broken. This is truly, truly mould-braking and points to a better world.
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