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

Well, today I caught up on the latest episodes of a series called "Un Village Français" (literally A French Village).

It is set in a fictional French village just off the Swiss border during World War 2, and tells the story of the inhabitants, their life and struggles, the collaboration and the resistance.

It's very well made, and it doesn't judge.
It shows realistic characters, with their contradictions, their values, and their opinions, and how they react to their village being invaded by the Germans, and to all that happens after that.
How the Mayor started to collaborate because it was a lesser evil, and how some people who started out as collaborators ended up in the resistance, and how others started collaborating in order to gain power, and how even the head of the SD in the village is not actually an evil evil monster from hell (well, he is a bit, but he does have a background that at least explains a lot of it)...
Human beings. Some nice, others less nice, yet others pretty bad, but *human* nonetheless.

The 5th season has just finished, and we've got as far as November 1943.

Inevitably, the very last episode saw some of the main characters die, some of whom I had grown quite fond of, so it was a bit moving, to say the least.


Also, the really really cool bit they do is, they show 2 episodes a week, and after those two episodes, they always have a little bit (oh, 5 minutes or so) called "Un Village Français, ils y étaient" (A French Village, they were there), where a historian gives a short talk on a theme, and they also interview actual former resistants and maquisards(), real people who lived through those events, and that is even more moving and interesting.


IMDB's page on Un Village Français :
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1288631/

() http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_(World_War_II)

[Amy P]

How has it gone down, generally, in France?

I am usually wary about referring to that period of history with Europeans, and even the British, because different people take different viewpoints, and I didn't live through it, but enjoy hearing the history from the axis' and other nation's viewpoints.

Enjoy.

MMF

It's been taken pretty well.
I don't really know many people from the older generation, who might have been through it, so can't vouch for them, though.
The younger generation, we were pretty much raised on the French-German friendship and the building of Europe, and learnt about WW2 in school, so I think it's really good to get to see what it must have been like.

It tries to be as objective as possible, and they have been working with several historians specialised in WW2, so the facts are there as well.
It is well made, and historically accurate.

AND most of all, it's not black and white, French goodies versus German baddies. Basically, they're all human, and they have human reactions (they love, hate, fight, flee, hide, cry and whatnot).



I think here, something about the Algerian war of independance (ended in 1962) would probably be less likely to go down well, as it is still pretty raw for a lot of people.

MMF

This is the elephant in the room I've been wondering about. Should I bring it up in a journal? So many people have amazingly inaccurate pictures of Europe during the war (particularly the British, and, of course, the Americans)

Particularly today, 9 November, Kristallnacht, but also the date of the re-unification of East and West Germany over 20 years ago now, German history is so near the surface.

I think there's a similar series to the one you describe on British television, SF, but I'm not sure what it's called. I haven't heard of one here, but I don't watch German television.

To my mother-in-law, who lived through the war, it meant deprivation, cold, and fear. I think most of the population weren't aware of what was going on - until Kristallnacht that is.

I'm not sure which British TV series you mean, TC. Many years ago we had the show "Secret Army", in which Bernard Hepton played a Brussels café owner, working for the Belgian resistance. Great cast - great drama.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46885000/jpg/_46885244_secret_army_bbc.jpg

Sadly, the BBC decided this stuff was a bit serious, so created a bad taste sitcom based on the above. Called "Allo Allo" (even the title mocks a French accent) it starred Gordon Kaye in the main role:

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/00023/ed_imgSNN0823E_23680a.jpg

Deb