Back when I was in college, I took a course in German history. The professor, without any change in tone or inflection, seamlessly slipped "...springtime for Hitler and Germany, winter for Poland and France..." into a lecture.
This was before 2005 version of the Producers came out, and the original had come out before any of the students were even born. Three of us lost our shit, and several dozen other students were utterly confused.
Wow. I had no idea this existed. Hard to believe that at no point in the pre-production someone didn’t point out how entirely inappropriate the whole concept was.
Monty Python and Mel Brooks did a Hitler parody a decade or two before this pilot. That was much closer to the time of the war. I think, as others have said, the real crime is how unfunny the show is.
Mr. Hilter, the Monty Python sketch isn't that different than the concept for this show. It's a "what would it be like if Hitler existed in England in modern times?" (modern times being 1970)
As a sketch I could see someone smart being able to pull something funny with that premise, but as an actual tv show you really wouldn't be able to do much past the premise unless you really delved into Hitler as a character and made him empathetic, and yeah, you just can't do that with Hitler hahaha. Like how am I gonna empathize with a guy who murdered 6 million innocent people?
If Hitler is gonna be your main character then you have a lot of work to do to make it work. I did really like JoJo Rabbit though, but also he was just a side character and the director/ writer knew how to use him as an imaginary friend.
As an example, there's a Monty Python sketch about Hitler living in a B&B in England and running in the North Minehead by-election on a platform of annexing Taunton.
That's a shame. I mean, I understand why people would be hella uncomfortable with it, but this has the potential to be hilarious. Maybe we could get the guys from South Park working on it?
i disagree. you have comedies related to funny premises. the thought of taking a movie like hotel rwanda or schindlers list and transforming it into a comedy makes my stomach churn.
have you been abused or have experienced some other form of trauma? i cant think of anything funny that could be tied to genocide but im curious how someone could think that way.
I wouldn't necessarily say so. It's not really pleasant or nice, but I think there are tons of examples where people laugh at that kind of stuff. There's a whole genre of holocaust jokes (worm in apple, grandpa fell off guardtower, etc) and a lot of humour is based on 'punching down'. I don't think it's admirable or anything, but certainly a thing. As far as factors for why someone would think that funny, in general I'd guess emotional immaturity (which could have a variety of roots) and maybe low-grade sociopathy as an effect of privilege. Personally, I'm not a very empathetic person, which likely has roots in my upbringing but not something I'd call abuse.
I don't mind paying for public service broadcasters as long as they fulfil the public service part. I am mostly annoyed that they spend so much money on broadcasting licenses for football.
A bit different, but a few years ago there was a rather short German series called "Familie Braun", in which a Nazi found out he had a child with a black woman, who then leaves the child in front of his door.
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u/The_Medicus 28d ago
Fun Fact; There was a sitcom in the 90s about Hitler and Ava Braun living next to Jews. I don't think it made it past the pilot.