Enemy at the Door

[altariel]

Because we are W.O.T. (With Out Television), we're catching up on the pile of unwatched DVDs. Right now we're mainlining Enemy at the Door, an LWT series which ran for two seasons between 1978-1980 about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands, and about which I had heard nothing until mraltariel rolled up with the DVDs of the first season last week.

We watched the first four episodes last night, and they were outstanding: exactly the kind of small cast, limited setting, tightly written episodic drama that telly used to do so well and doesn't often seem to have the confidence (or capability?) to do much of any more. [Insert standard grump.] It has some of the usual representational problems of the time; for example, when two young men try to make a night-time escape in a rowing boat, you know it's the posh one that's going to become the regular and the working-class one with the MASSIVE BULLSEYE painted on him. But this is a minor gripe; as mraltariel said, it's so good, you'd think the BBC had made it. (Incidentally, the scenes between those two young men as they made their plans for their escape were so slashy that not even I could miss it.)

Look at the cast list: it's outstanding. For your particular delight, however, I shall draw your attention to a devastatingly young Anthony Stewart Head (top left photo; he must be about twenty-four), playing a Royal Navy lieutenant who is the son of the local doctor. His character has just secretly arrived back on Guernsey and, given we're getting both story-of-the-week and story arc, there's surely lots of high peril and associated anxiety to come. (John Nettles is in it too: surely crossing Enemy at the Door with Bergerac would create the world's smallest and most geographically specific fandom ever?)

Unpretentious, gripping, consummately written: big thumbs-up.

Comments

[julesjones]

Damn you, woman, I already have a DVD wishlist a mile long and am currently without hardware to play it on...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Ooh, it is good though...

[pseudnik.livejournal.com]

Pam St. Clement as Fat Molly? I'm not sure if I should be laughing at that or not.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Wait till you hear her Irish accent.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

That sounds vaguely familiar. I've seen either that or some other TV series set on the occupied Channel Islands, but more than that I can't remember.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

This is very like Secret Army: many of the same people were involved.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

"Secret Army" I can remember faitly well, though I think I only started watching it after it had been going a year or two.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

::sigh:: I don't watch much stuff with military personnel, but ASH *and* David Calder? Tempting.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm looking to him putting in an appearance too. The Channel Islanders are all civilians, if that makes a difference.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Not much, sorry. Stargate is about the only thing with military in it that I can stomach; it's a fairly extreme dislike of mine. I suspect that at least part of the reason I don't care for the Third Doctor is all the Unit stuff.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

That sounds good. I do like a bit of peril. Ooh, a lot of familiar faces on that cast list - two, in fact, from an episode of the Professionals I watched the other night. Hope your WOT state is not of long standing.

[mraltariel.livejournal.com]

The wind blew over our satellite dish. Despite prancing around on the roof in bare feet and a dressing gown, I was unable to re-align it with the satellite. I have to ring for a man.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Were you not struck by lightning and given special powers? Surely it would make more sense to fly up to the satellite and align it with *you*.

[mraltariel.livejournal.com]

Now you're talking.

[mrkinch.livejournal.com]

Sounds lovely. Sixth row down, second from right. Can you put a name to that face? My brain is running circles and catching nothing. I can hear the man but I can't even name the production.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Neil McCarthy. You may have seen him in a huge number of things; my guess is on Zulu, or on PBS in an adaptation of The Nine Tailors, or possibly Clash of the Titans?

[mrkinch.livejournal.com]

The Nine Tailors

! Thank you. Now I should revisit his episode of

The Professionals

.

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

I'd like to recommend The model occupation : the Channel Islands under German rule, 1940-1945 by Madeleine Bunting. Hammersmith, London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995. xxii, 354 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.

It is a very well paced and engaging read.

I particularly remember the chapter about the heroic resistance efforts of the Guernsey Communist Party. All three of them.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of the heroic, short-lived Welsh invasion of Patagonia in Aberyswyth, Mon Amour - have you ever read that? Have you, altariel? It's a really clever, funny series of noir-esque detective novels set in Aberyswyth, where the druids run the town, and people hang around and do deals at seedy ice cream stands.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

[adds to reading list]

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Last Tango in Aberyswyth, the sequel, is also very funny - it's about the stovepipe hat porn industry - but I haven't read the others.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That sounds great!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I have never read any of these, although I have always been pleased by the title (and several people I know swear by them).

[altariel.livejournal.com]

That sounds excellent, thank you for the rec.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, I vaguely remember that! I think my mother watched it. I remember something wartime on an island anyway. It does sound good.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Another three episodes today and the quality has stayed very high.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

I think I remember EatD. There was, IIRC, an episode where a German soldier ended up on a rape charge. That was the only one I saw. Don't know if it was 1st or 2nd season.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

That was the third episode, and it was excellent.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

From what I recall (very little, as it happens), it did adopt an impressively humane and considered attitude towards the social and interpersonal complexities of occupation, rather than a simplistic them-and-us stance. Would something like that get made today? Being permanently without telly, I can't say.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think some of the HBO shows do this kind of thing: The Wire, for example. It's possible that Casualty does it, but I don't watch Casualty because hospital dramas make me queasy.

ETA: Pay no attention whatsoever to my last sentence: I entirely missed out the long, tortuous and not terribly interesting chain of thought that had happened between your description and my ending up at Casualty.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

Just to show how far out of the modern media mainstream I am: isn't HBO a kind of pencil?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Or a kind of deodorant. Or something else entirely...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed!

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

There are some very familiar faces in there, though he who used to play DS Roach in The Bill is not as recognisable sans moustache. It's a curly-haired Alun Armstrong that's floored me...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't recognize Roach.

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

Mouseovers rule. I wouldn't have had the foggiest idea who half those people were. More than half, most likely...

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

(Edited due to messing up italic tags.)

Hurrah for DVDs of late seventies/early eighties telly of delight! I know not of Enemy at the Door, but may well have to partake of it.

My crossover brain instantly thought of crossing it with The Chalet School in Exile, and I would larf like a drane if there were a coded telegram that went 'Triplets at Les Rosiers. All shes' in EatD, but that's only happening in my imagination, which has a bit of complication, Kylie notwithstanding. It would also be a teeny-tiny fandom, I betcha. Perhaps we could just add it to the Bergerac crossover?

I have been watching Tenko again, over the weekend, and will be watching it even more now my box set has arrived. I ordered it on Sunday after discovering I did not, in fact, own it all on video, but only season 1, and had been blithely reassuring iainjcoleman that I could lend him the Reunion Special should that not be broadcast, and then I discovered that I couldn't, so it would have been a lie, but now I can again so I really haven't told a lie after all.