BBC1
I guess if The Passing Bells has taught us anything it is that the Germans were just like us. Same hopes, same dreams, same semi-attractive girlfriends who they only get a ride off once every 12 months. As a result of one such ride Joanna the Pole gives birth to a crossbreed in front of her future in-laws. It’s a boy! And a bastard! Foreign, fatherless and illegitimate it has a great future ahead of it in Stoke-on-Trent or wherever the fuck he is.
Foreign, fatherless and illegitimate it has a great future ahead of it in Stoke-on-Trent or wherever the fuck he is.
Over on the continent Michael the Kraut‘s in Belgium retreating like a little bitch with the rest of the Hun. Rumours of an imminent end to the war abound on both sides. Nobody is taking anything for granted though, certainly not Tommy who continues to wistfully dream of his feathered friends.
“I don’t think people realise how beautiful birds are” he tells Derek. What a stupid little bitch.
When that deluded mommy’s boy Kaiser Bill it’s clear the armistice will quickly follow. On the final day of the war Tommy fixes a barbed-wire fence in no man’s land and comes face-to-face with Michael who had the exact same idea. They see they are really not so different. And so they roll around and have a big cuddly play fight cuddle. Unfortunately it gets out of hand and Michael gets a bayonet through the tits and Tommy gets a bullet in the guts. Just as the armistice is announced.
They are both dead like a pair of cunts. A bird flies in from the barbed wire and shits on Tommy. Again and again and again. He really should have seen that one coming.
In a Sliding Doors style alternative history we see Michael’s path as he survive. In 25 years he is commandant at a Nazi death camp shovelling Jews into ovens like sausage rolls, personally shooting 913 escapees and overseeing the rape of 3,102 Jewish women.
Yeah, the Germans. They were Just Like Us.
The verdict: Wait til you see the sequel.
Marks out of 10: 5