I can't recall watching this on its original broadcast more than 25 years ago . I do recall the original episodes of SECRET ARMY and watching the repeats recently I was very impressed indeed as to what great drama they were and much of my enjoyment was down to Ludwig Kessler , both the way he was written and the way he was played by Clifford Rose , one of the most criminally underrated performances ever seen on television . I wouldn't have thought it was essential to make a follow on series and seeing KESSLER my opinion still stands because this is a very unnecessary show
The reason SECRET ARMY worked so well was because it was bloody good drama . It may appear slightly old fashioned to a present day audience in 2008 in that it's somewhat stagey but no one can dispute that it's very well written and acted complete with superb character interaction and moral ambiguity . KESSLERR is entirely different because it's more a thriller in the same vein as Robert Ludlum , Frederick Forsyth and possibly even Ira Levin . A Nazi war criminal goes to South America and meets fellow Nazis including Dr Josef Mengele ! All we need now is Lord Olivier turning up with a laughably phony Yiddish accent and we've got another unintentional comedy about the Nazi Fourth Reich
Thankfully this series never descends in to camp and Oscar Quitak does give a convincing performance as Mengele but there's little else about this sequel that convinces . Where as in SECRET ARMY much of the drama comes from bad Nazi Kessler arguing with good Germans like Brandt and Reinhardt here much of the drama comes from old style Nazi war criminal Kessler arguing with new Fourth Reich Nazis and it doesn't work . We also have to endure repetitive scenes of Kessler telling his daughter " Did I mention how much I loved your mother ? " which becomes overbearing and unsubtle . There's also small details such as Jewish assassin Miccal Rac explaining that her explaining her parents were murdered by the Nazis but it's obvious by the casting that Miccal is played by a Sephardic Jew ( Arab Jew ) where as the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis were Ashkanazi Jews ( European Jews ) . This all comes together to make KESSLER a totally unnecessary sequel to one of the great British dramas
The reason SECRET ARMY worked so well was because it was bloody good drama . It may appear slightly old fashioned to a present day audience in 2008 in that it's somewhat stagey but no one can dispute that it's very well written and acted complete with superb character interaction and moral ambiguity . KESSLERR is entirely different because it's more a thriller in the same vein as Robert Ludlum , Frederick Forsyth and possibly even Ira Levin . A Nazi war criminal goes to South America and meets fellow Nazis including Dr Josef Mengele ! All we need now is Lord Olivier turning up with a laughably phony Yiddish accent and we've got another unintentional comedy about the Nazi Fourth Reich
Thankfully this series never descends in to camp and Oscar Quitak does give a convincing performance as Mengele but there's little else about this sequel that convinces . Where as in SECRET ARMY much of the drama comes from bad Nazi Kessler arguing with good Germans like Brandt and Reinhardt here much of the drama comes from old style Nazi war criminal Kessler arguing with new Fourth Reich Nazis and it doesn't work . We also have to endure repetitive scenes of Kessler telling his daughter " Did I mention how much I loved your mother ? " which becomes overbearing and unsubtle . There's also small details such as Jewish assassin Miccal Rac explaining that her explaining her parents were murdered by the Nazis but it's obvious by the casting that Miccal is played by a Sephardic Jew ( Arab Jew ) where as the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis were Ashkanazi Jews ( European Jews ) . This all comes together to make KESSLER a totally unnecessary sequel to one of the great British dramas