Category Archives: TV Show

Wise Words from Criminal Minds

When I titled this commentary Wise Words from Criminal Minds—I did not actually mean criminal minds, but rather, quotes from the TV show Criminal Minds.

The fictional series follows a group of criminal profilers who work for the FBI as members of its Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). They use behavioural analysis and profiling to help investigate crimes and find the suspect—known as the unsub [unknown subject].

The show features one or more quotes at the start of most episodes and sometimes at the end. The quotes are often from historical figures.

Below are just some examples.

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
—Joseph Conrad, a Polish writer working in England regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the English language.

“Evil is always unspectacular, and always human, and shares our bed, and eats at our table.”
—Wystan Hugh Auden, (Anglo-American) poet known for his vast poetic work in many forms on many themes.

Better to be violent if there’s violence in our hearts than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.” —Gandhi

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” — Gandhi.

“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, theologian, a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and founding member of the Confessing Church. (The Nazi regime executed him on 9 April 1945.)

“We can easily forgive a child who’s afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” —Plato.

“In order to learn the important lessons in life, one must each day surmount a fear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

“Nothing is easier than denouncing the evildoer. Nothing more difficult than understanding him.”
—Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. (Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.)

“He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”
—Leonardo da Vinci

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” —Edmund Burke, Irish statesman and author

“I’m not afraid of death. It’s the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.” —Jean Giraudoux, French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright

“There is no present or future; only the past, happening over and over again now.”
—Eugene O’Neill, American playwright and Nobel Laureate in Literature.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” —Albert Einstein

“Your memory is a monster; it summons with a will of its own. You think you have a memory, but it has you.”
—John Irving, an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (The Cider House Rules, based on his novel of the same name)

Derrick in the SS

Anyone who grew up in Germany or the Netherlands, would have seen at least one episode of the German Police drama Derrick, set in Munich. The show ran between 1974 and 1998. It is well-rumoured that even Pope John Paul II was a fan.

Yesterday, I started watching a TV show called Faking Hitler. It is about Konrad Kujau, the man who forged the Hitler diaries. The show mentioned that Horst Tappert had been in the Waffen SS. Horst Tappert was the actor who played the aforementioned character Derrick, as seen in the above picture.

This came as a surprise to me. In April 2013, information emerged he had served as a member of the notorious Waffen-SS during World War II and had hidden the fact for years. Reruns of Derrick were suspended in Germany and some other countries as a result. He had never personally disclosed his connection with the SS. At age 19, he was, according to his widow against his will, transferred from the Army to the Waffen-SS. Initially a member of a reserve anti-aircraft unit in Arolsen, he was listed as a grenadier with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf in March 1943. In 1945, he was briefly a prisoner of war in Seehausen, Altmark. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from 19 April to 16 May 1943 was the training Battalion of the 3rd Panzer Division Totenkopf that took part in the suppression of the uprising. Given the fact that was soon after Tappert had joined the division, there is a great likelihood he would have been involved.

Horst Tappert wasn’t the only one with a connection to Derrick that had an SS past. The main author of the Derrick stories, Herbert Reinecker, joined the Hitler Youth movement in 1932 at the age of 17. From April 1935 onward, Reinecker worked full-time as a propagandist for the Nazi youth movement.

In 1936, Reinecker moved to Berlin where he became the editor-in-chief of the youth magazine, Jungvolk. In the same year, he also co-authored a book, Jugend in Waffen (Armed Youth). This was a time when the Nazis had already been in power for three years and when the media had long been gleichgeschaltet (the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control). In 1943, he joined the Nazi Party and worked as the editor-in-chief of a magazine, Der Pimpf (The Pimp) about the training system of the Hitler Youth. Throughout World War II, Reinecker served in the propaganda company of the Waffen SS.

I was wondering why there weren’t any reruns of the show. I moved to Ireland in 1997, it’s why I missed out on the media reports in Germany and the Netherlands about the Derrick scandal.

Horst Tappert died in 2008, and Herbert Reinecker on 27 January 2007, ironically the date of the International Holocaust remembrance.

sources

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22384143

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/report-reveals-derrick-actor-horst-tappert-was-an-ss-member-a-896765.html

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/09/baue-o09.html

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070981/?ref_=ttmi_tt

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/pimpf.htm

Happy Birthday Doctor Who

At 5.16pm on the 23rd November 1963 the BBC premiered “An Unearthly Child” and UK television viewers were introduced to the incredible world of Doctor Who for the first time.

William Hartnell was the Doctor, a strange old man who could travel through time and space in his police box. Little did anyone know that this was just the first incarnation of a character who would go on to be so iconic for well over half a century, 59 years and counting.

Doctor Who first appeared on the BBC Television Service at 17:16:20 GMT on Saturday, 23 November 1963; this was eighty seconds later than the scheduled program time, because of announcements concerning the previous day’s assassination of John F. Kennedy.It was to be a regular weekly programme, each episode 25 minutes of transmission length. Discussions and plans for the programme had been in progress for a year. The head of drama Sydney Newman was mainly responsible for developing the programme, with the first format document for the series being written by Newman along with the head of the script department (later head of serials) Donald Wilson and staff writer C. E. Webber; in a 1971 interview Wilson claimed to have named the series, and when this claim was put to Newman he did not dispute it. Writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series.

The show was originally designed to be an educational adventure of sorts for families, learning about history and science depending on where they travelled.

sources

Doctor Who is 59!

https://geekireland.com/doctor-who-quick-guide-the-first-doctor/

Fawlty Towers

The key to good comedy is timing, someone once said. If that is the case John Cleese and Connie Booth must have the best sense of timing ever.

As the title suggests I am talking about ‘Fawlty Towers’ although it may seem there were hundreds of episodes, there were in fact only 12, spread over 2 seasons.

The first episode of Fawlty Towers aired on 19 September 1975. Audiences were keen to see what John Cleese would do after Monty Python, but at first the situation comedy received some less than enthusiastic reviews. However the strength of the writing and casting – with Cleese as hotelier Basil Fawlty – ensured the series was a great success.

The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay on the English Riviera. The plots centre on the tense, rude and put-upon owner Basil Fawlty (Cleese), his bossy wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), the sensible chambermaid Polly (Booth) who often is the peacemaker and voice of reason, and the hapless and English-challenged Spanish waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs). They show their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests and tradespeople.

The idea of the show came from Cleese after he stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon in 1970 (along with the rest of the Monty Python troupe), where he encountered the eccentric hotel owner Donald Sinclair.

Stuffy and snobbish, Sinclair treated guests as though they were a hindrance to his running of the hotel (a waitress who worked for him stated “it was as if he didn’t want the guests to be there”). Sinclair was the inspiration for Cleese’s character Basil Fawlty.

Fawlty Towers was written by Cleese with his wife Connie Booth. The shows were intricately plotted farces, and no dialogue was written until the plot had been finalised. The ensemble cast included Prunella Scales as Basil’s wife Sybil, and Andrew Sachs as the well-meaning but incompetent waiter Manuel. Booth provided an important element of sanity and calm as Polly the chambermaid.

Only 12 half hour episodes were ever made. The decision to stop making Fawlty Towers when it was at its creative height, leaving a distinct legacy, inspired later comedians such as Ricky Gervais. In 2000 Fawlty Towers was voted the best British television programme of all time in a BFI poll, above Cathy Come Home and Doctor Who.

There are so mamy hilarious moments I could pick, but this is my favourite. Who has never heard the expression “Don’t mention the war”

sources

https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/september/fawlty-towers/

Cheers- A classic sitcom, but there is more…

Cheers_intro_logo

I usually do very heavy historical blogs but every once in a while I do a more lighthearted and quirky ones, more for my own sanity then anything else, this is one of those quirky ones.

Cheers is one of the most popular sitcoms and rightfully so, not only was Cheers very funny the spin off was even funnier and more successful. That spin off , of course is ‘Frasier’

frasier

Before I continue though I need to warn you because this blog is not so much about Cheers or Frasier but more about the theme song of Cheers, “Where everybody knows your name” After you have read this blog you will probably look at Cheers in a different way, but don’t worry it is all good.

At the start of each episode of Cheers we only hear a part of the theme song. The original song lasts for 2.30 minutes, the song was written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo. And the lyrics in the song are hilarious.

Below are the lyrics of the part of the song you don’t hear in the show.

All those night when you’ve got no lights,
The check is in the mail;
And your little angel
Hung the cat up by it’s tail;
And your third fiance didn’t show;

Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee’s dead;
The morning’s looking bright;
And your shrink ran off to Europe,
And didn’t even write;
And your husband wants to be a girl.

 

Another quirky fact Rhea Perlman wasn’t the only member of her family to grace the set of Cheers. Her younger sister, Heide, produced more than two dozen episodes between 1985 and 1986 and wrote several episodes throughout the show’s run. Perlman’s father, Phil, played one of the bar regulars (named Phil).

Phil

Cheers is just one of those shows of which you can say, “They just don’t make them like that anymore”

Cheers_cast_1991

 

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