h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Last year, I wrote about a tv show called "Un Village Fran�ais" : http://h2g2.com/user_journal/U9937105/conversation/view/F8387085/T8305651 A fictional French village just off the Swiss border during World War 2, and the story of the inhabitants, their life and struggles, the collaboration and the resistance. Season 6 started last week, and I just watched the first episode. It's 1944, Paris has just been liberated, the Allies are getting closer and closer to te village, and the German soldiers are getting ready to leave. And the French militiamen are getting more and more desperate. Some of them want to follow the Germans, others would rather stay and fight till the end. A group goes to a farm where they heard there were resistants, and kills everyone they find. The Policemen, who have collaborated with the occupants, are now realising they won't be protected anymore, and trying to strike a deal with the local resistance : we let the last few resistant prisoners go, and you promise not to summarily execute us, please. The resistants are getting more and more daring, victory is coming, all we need to do is make sure we make the collaborationists and traitors pay. The local head of the SS is planning to cross over to Switzerland with his French mistress (a married woman). I'm really looking forward to the next episodes.

If only my French consisted of more than Monsieur Lafayette looks for his keys! Sounds like a good bit of telly!

[Amy P]

I guess our creative community is still mining the Second World War for material. Granted, there was a lot of material to mine, but with every passing year it gets harder to find anything fresh.

I'm reading a book called "Blackout," a science fiction novel set in 2060. A group of history students at Oxford have access to time travel, which they use for going back to "divergent" points in history to observe what things were like first hand. Imagine going back to London in the early 1940s knowing which places will get bombed and which will be safe.

Deb