Hitler (Neil McCaul) has just invaded Chekoslovakia, and now British
prime minister Neville Chamberlain (Patrick Cargill) announces to stop by
and make Hitler sign a peace treaty. However, this is not handled like a
historical documentary but an American sitcom from the 1950's, and thus,
Hitler lives in the suburbs with his wife Eva Braun (Denica Fairman) and
his nosey (Jewish) neighbours, the Goldensteins (Caroline Gruber, Gareth
Marks), and when they learn about Hitler's visitor, they decide to seize
the opportunity to try and hook their wallflowerish niece Ruth (Laura
Brattan) with the Hitlers' VIP guest, pretty much crashing the party,
creating chaos and giving away all of Hitler's military secrets. And in
the end, to get out of the mess created by his own wishes to conquer
Europe and his neighbours drunken meddling, Hitler does indeed sign
Chamberlain's treaty. And Chamberlain gets the girl, Ruth, on top of that
... To put one of history's darkest chapters of the 20th
century into the context of a family friendly comedy sounds tasteless,
impious, absurd, controversial, politically incorrect ... and is worth a
try for exactly those reasons. The outcome is, oh well, probably way too
harmless to do the matter at hand much justice, and doesn't feel nearly as
controversial and tasteless as its concept might suggest, playing more on
the 1950's sitcom foundation than its Hitler-character - but it does in
fact have a few funny spots, though not nearly enough laughs to justify
the 25 minutes of runtime, it would have worked better as an extended
sketch in a sketch-show. Interestingly though, it was originally planned
to turn this one into a series, allegedly at least, and also it's said
that a total of eight episodes have been filmed, but other than this
pilot, none of them were shown, ever. Oh well, if you are not of the
politically correct denomination, you will get a few chuckles out of this,
but it's certainly not something you need to see.
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