I bought the complete series, or at least I thought
The serie contains 42 episodes, not according to IMDB. The last episode in mydvdbox of the 3th season is "Execution", Acording to IMDB it is "What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?"
Anyone can tell something more about it ?
The BBC was disatisfied with the episode, possibly due to its polemical tone, and claimed it had been unable to complete the editing due to ongoing disputes with the broadcasting unions. According to the BBC documentary Shelved, broadcast on 12-12-09, this was untrue and the script's leaden anti-communist theme was at odds with the series' previously subtle writing. None of the cast members interviewed for that programme were now in favour of it being released.
shareThe discussion in the Radio 4 programme was fascinating! I think some sequences from the missing episode are edited into Kessler.
shareIt shiould be shown. I am an ardent anti-Communist who believes that we only halfwon the war.
shareFor anyone who values the series but hasn't seen the apocryphal episode 'What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?' I recommend keeping it that way. Bad script, bad acting, bad makeup - just plain bad. It stands no comparison to the rest of the series. It's set a quarter century later and should be considered a thing apart.
"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken."
Having seen 'What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?' I have to regretfully pretty much agree with denham's assessment.
The script at times seems like a first draft of an amateur agitprop play of the 1970s (yes, THAT bad). It's repetitive, "on the nose" and very disjointed. There is little opportunity for real drama because the characters are 2D representations of simplistic ideas rather than believable people. In those circumstances it isn't surprising that some of the performances are awkward because actors have to play the subtext and there just isn't any.
I'm not unsympathetic to some of the ideas in there but they were so crudely expressed and the bitter clumsiness of the whole piece would have been such an anticlimax after the rest of this superb series that I can understand the BBC not showing it so as not to devalue what had gone before.
If you can take the disappointment, I would say that it is an interesting watch; partly to see how the makers thought the characters would have evolved over time, but also as an object lesson in how many people who had consistently produced such great work before (and many of them also worked on the brilliant Colditz) were capable of getting things so badly wrong.