I find Swedes, probably as they are a Germanic people, to be very similar. I’m a typical Brit, but I’ve had people tell me that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.
To be honest, Swedes often say to me, when discussing humour, that they “love British humour”. The thing is, they really mean that they “love Monty Python”. They know very little of British humour since the 70s, except perhaps Mr Bean.
German TV did eventually buy the BBC comedy series “Allo! Allo!” (a farcical skit on a drama series about WW2 escape lines in occupied France and Belgium). The Wehrmacht officers were bumbling and lazy amateur crooks, and the Gestapo equally comically incompetent as assorted plans and plots fell apart into absurd farce, slapstick and double entendre, since the resisters and the British airmen were as unheroic as the Germans were un-sinister. There were a few swastikas on display, as indeed there inevitably have been in German TV series dealing with the period, like Heimat and Generation War (Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter)
Listen carefully, I am only going to say this once! :dubious:
Both 'Allo 'Allo! and Hogan’s Heroes only made it to German TV many years after the original series aired (Hogan’s Heroes almost 30 years later).
Magnum, PI aired on public German TV (there was no commercials broadcasting in Germany until the mid 80s). In one Magnum episode, the story is about an elderly Jewish man who takes revenge upon his former Nazi tormentors (I’m sure I have the details wrong, but this was basically the premise). In the dubbed version for German TV, the dialogues were completely rewritten and they told a different story (the Jewish man went after Palestinian terrorists). The reason for this was that Magnum was considered light entertainment and the TV officials felt a Nazi theme was inappropriate for a TV show in this genre.
No, no: “I shall say zis only wernce…”
Oh, Rene! :o
