Britain’s fallen to the Nazis and Humphrey Bogart’s on the case
Buckingham Palace i s bombed, giant swastikas hang from the houses of Parliament and churchill is dead. Stories of him giving a defiant V sign as he faced the firing squad abound.
The year is 1941 and Britain is under nazi control having lost the Battle of Britain. in SS-GB (Sunday BBc1) the nightmare of what could have happened is imagined in the BBc’s big-budget adaption of Len Deighton’s 1978 book.
in the opening sequence we saw a german- piloted Spitfire flying down The mall in London to mark the start of german/Soviet ‘Friendship week’. Suddenly, a Resistance fighter broke through the crowds and shot dead a Luftwaffe officer . The message was clear: the war was lost but the fight continued.
But SS-gB wasn’t just a picture of life under german rule. There was also a story within a story . a grisly murder told against the backdrop of a grisly Britain.
german-speaking Superintend - ent Douglas archer (Sam Riley) worked at Scotland Y ard, which was controlled by the SS. as far as colleagues were concerned, he was a shifty one. compliant with his bosses, critical of the Resistance, even his own son questioned whether he was a traitor.
When archer was called upon to i nvestigate the murder of an antiques dealer, at first it looked to be a straightforward case of a black marketeer getting his come - uppance. But when hitler’s henchman heinrich himmler dispatched the thoroughly nasty SS colonel huth to oversee the investigation, you knew all was not as it seemed.
To complicate matters further , a glamorous american journalist, Barbara Barga (k ate Bosworth), was seen fleeing the scene. Who was she? What did she know? and would she or archer ever pause between cigarettes long enough to have a proper conversation?
german director Philipp k adelbach brilliantly captured the mood of a city under nazi occupation. The skies and buildings were grey , its inhabitants downtrodden and generally terrorised.
Shot in the manner of film noir , SS-gB was slick and atmospheric. Yet, at times, it felt as though substance was being sacrificed for style. There were a tad too many scenes of characters lurking in the shadows, loitering in alleyways and moodily dragging on cigarettes.
accompanied by the clipped dialogue, there were occasions when the odd scene felt only one French maid away from ’allo ’allo reimagined.
That said, SS-gB was bold, brave and largely carried by the excellent Sam Riley , who i s surely the coolest Fedora-hat-wearer since humphrey Bogart.
Looking anything but gloomy was the island of Berneray , one of Paul murton’s stops in Grand Tours Of The Scottish Islands (BBc2 Saturday).
in the first episode of a new six-parter, the beauty of Berneray was breathtaking. With its white sands and turquoise waters, it was understandable that the cheeky people at the Thai Tourist Board used pictures of its beach to promote Thailand.
it was also the island where Prince charles secretly spent time in 1987 learning the skills of a crofter, including the annual nightmare of taking dozens of sheep on their summer holiday.
The animals needed fresh grazing and, as murton discovered, that could only be achieved by packing them all on to a boat and taking them to another island five miles away.
herding sheep into a boat is difficult enough, keeping them there is something else. F or if one goes overboard the rest follow ... like sheep.
Enchanting and uplifting , you could almost smell the fresh air coming through the TV screen.