306 Secret Army

First  viewed  :  7  September  1977

This  is  another  series  that  I  started  watching  alone  although  Mum  and  Helen  eventually  bought  into  it.  I enjoyed  catching  up  with  it  on  Yesterday  channel  a  few  years  back.

It  was  a  joint  Anglo-Belgian  production  - though  the  cast  was  Belgian-free - about  a  fictional  resistance  movement  Lifeline   during  World  War  Two  dedicated  to  returning  shot-down  British  airmen  to  Britain. It  ran  for  three  series, the  last  of  which  covered  the  end  of  the  war  and  its  aftermath. It  was  created   by  Gerard  Glaister  who  himself  served  in  the  RAF  during  the  war   and  had  previously  produced  P.O.W.  drama  Colditz.

Lifeline  was  initially  run  by  a  young  woman  Lisa  Colbert  ( Jan  Francis  though  I  didn't  recognise  it  was  the  same  girl  from  The  Long  Chase  )  who  worked  as  a  nurse. The  principal  safe  house  was  a  humdrum  cafe  in  Brussels,  The  Candide  run  by  Albert  Foiret  ( Bernard  Hepton   who  played  the  camp  commandant  in  Colditz )  aided  by  his  mistress  Monique  ( Angela  Richards ). Other  helpers  were  stunning  nurse  Natalie  ( Juliet  Hammond-Hill )  and  radio  operating  farmer  Alain  ( Ron  Pember ).  Their  adversaries  were   decent  Luftwaffe  man  Brandt ( Michael  Culver )  and  icy  Gestapo   chief  Kessler  ( Clifford  Rose  who  played  a  similar  nasty  in  Callan  ) .

Secret  Army  very  effectively  highlighted  the  bravery  and  stomach-knotting  tension  involved  in  such  work  and  was  quite  intense  for  a  pre-watershed  show. In  common  with  much  drama  around  this  period  it  didn't  trouble  to  make  its  characters  particularly  likable. Albert  was  carrying  on  with  Monique  with  an  invalid  wife  upstairs   and  both  the  British  spies  who  came  over  to  assist,  Curtis  ( Christopher  Neame ) and   Bradley  ( Paul  Shelley ) were  insufferably  arrogant. Sometimes  Lifeline  had  to  be  as  ruthless  as  the  Germans , killing  a  young  mother  and  even  one  of  the  air  pilots  themselves  when  their  security  was  compromised.

Secret  Army   reflected  the  dangers  of  the  situation  with  a  high  mortality  rate   among  the  cast.  Lisa  died , ironically  as  a  result  of  an  Allied  bombing  raid,  at the  start  of  the  second  series  when  Jan  Francis  decided  to  quit  and  Brandt  committed  suicide  at  the  other  end  of  Series  2  when  implicated  in  a  plot  against  Hitler.  After  Lisa's  death  Albert , now  running  a  restaurant  patronised  by  the  Germans  took  over  the  operation  but  it  now  faced  a  new  threat  from  the  Belgian  communists  who  placed  their  own  man  Max  ( the  ubiquitous  Stephen  Yardley ) in  the  organisation  but  working  to  a  different  agenda. I  didn't  like  that  development  or  the  losses  of  Lisa  and  Curtis  who  had  to  flee  Belgium  at  the  end  of  the  first  series  and  largely  dropped  out  of  the  second   which  ended  with   Albert  rumbling  Max  and  arranging  his  death.

I  returned  for  the  third  series  where  Monique  took  over  the  organisation  from  Albert  who  was  in  prison  for  the  suspected  murder  of  his  wife, a  false  accusation  levelled  by  the  vengeful  communists. Brandt  was  replaced  by  Rheinhardt   ( Terence  Hardiman )  a  cynical  but  equally  decent  officer  who  finally  succeeded  in  uncovering  Lifeline  just  as  the  Allies  moved  into  the  city. Kessler  in  the  meantime  developed  a  relationship  with  a  Belgian  woman  Madeline  which  softened  his  character  a  little  but  not  enough  to  forgive  the  writers  for  letting  him  escape  justice  in  the  final  episode. The  last  few  episodes  concerned  the  liberation  of  the  city   and  its  aftermath  which  proved  the  danger  wasn't  over  yet  for  any  of  the  characters.

Mention  should  also  be  made  of  the  great  title  sequence  with  its  ominous  tracking  shots  of  the  Belgian  countryside  at  night   and  a  theme  tune  from  Canadian  composer  Robert  Farnon  that  was  appropriately  full  of  dread.

The  series  finished  at  the  end  of  1979  although  there  was  a  sequel  which  we'll  come  to  in  due  course.  Great  though  it  was  it's  hard  now  to  disassociate  it  from   Allo  Allo.  I  have  to  admit  I  enjoyed  that   too,  at  least  for  a  while  but  I  think  it's  a  shame  the  Beeb  allowed  one  of  its  own  great  creations  to  be  parodied  so  closely.