SS-GB a Nazi piece of work
WHAT if we’d lost the Battle of Britain? SS-GB imagines what Blighty would be like under the heel of the Nazi jackboot.
A firing squad shoots Churchill dead, George VI is banged up in the Tower, the Queen Mum legs it to New Zealand…
It’s dramatic stuff, unsettling too. Or at least it would be if we’d seen any of it. All the main action is happening off screen.
Our hero, Archer of the Yard, is equally frustrating. He croaks, he mumbles, he rasps like he smokes 80-aday…the bloke sounds like a tracheotomy waiting to happen.
Douglas Archer looks way too young to be a Detective Superintendent. And because he’s forced to work alongside Nazis (“the Herberts”) he keeps his feelings buttoned up tighter than a nun’s nightie.
The plot revolves around a murder in Soho’s red light district. It looks routine until Oskar Huth, a high-ranking SS Standartenfuhrer, flies in from Berlin to supervise the investigation.
Some Brits think Archer’s a bigger dick than Cressida, accusing him of collaborating. But he argues that the Germans will be gone one day and we’ll get back to how we were.
“If we let things fall apart now it’s going to be difficult…The law is all we have and quite frankly, I’m it.”
The law isn’t all we have, though. There’s the Resistance too – the great detective hadn’t sussed his girlfriend Sylvia and Harry, his sergeant, are part of it. There is talk of plucky freedom- fighter John Spode taking out a Panzer tank with a tyre iron (also off-camera.)
To date we’ve had laid-back performances, muted dialogue, murky scenes, and a plodding pace that grips like a bald tyre on an ice rink.
Things could pick up though. Onearmed John is stalking Archer’s son.
And there’s babealicious Barbara Barga. The classy, blonde New York Times reporter talks like she’s in a 1940s movie, is clearly more than she seems and could easily inspire less mumbling and more fumbling.
The promise of passion, intrigue, armed struggle and danger keeps the show watchable…for now.
SS-GB mysteries: Why haven’t the Nazis brought back Edward VIII? Where’s Sir Oswald Mosley?
Why did a 1941 London air raid shelter sign show distances in metres?
And, most puzzling of all, how did Archer know about Big Bill Broonzy’s 1940 blues classic Key To The Highway, let alone get hold of a copy?
HOW a Nazi victory would have changed our culture: Top soap – Coronation Strasse; Top sitcom – Birds of a Fuhrer; Top pop show – The Old Horst Wessel Test; Top band – SS Club 7.