Heil Honey I'm Home! (1990)

 

Director: Juliet May

Screenplay: Geoff Atkinson and Paul Wayne

Cast: Neil McCaul as Adolf Hitler, Denica Fairman as  Eva Braun, Gareth Marks as  Arny Goldenstein, Caroline Gruber as  Rosa Goldenstein; Patrick Cargill as  Neville Chamberlain; Laura Brattan as  Ruth

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

I'm a very, very bad Hitler!

Just after Dad's Army (1968-77), a famous British television series in which an aging home guard in the middle of World War II train to protect Britain under the leadership of Lindsay Anderson regular Arthur Lowe, the satellite television station Galaxy followed up with a pilot which that announcer states "And unless Arthur Lowe defeats him, it's the man himself in a few moments in Heil Honey, I'm Home!, as the Galaxy Comedy Weekend continues.". Thus, almost haphazardly, the male voice over narrator for the station perfectly set up the last words for what was to be one of the most infamous TV pilots ever to be created and broadcasted. What never really is documented, at least in materials I learnt of this show as I grew up, was that the show was meant to be subversive, not merely a misguided idea to image Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as stars of a sitcom, with a canned laughter track and Jewish neighbours the Goldensteins, without meaning to intentionally play this as the dark joke. It was also designed as a found footage project - that, in a fictional content, a producer named Brendan Thalbury had created at least eight episodes, only for it to disappear and be rediscovered on the Burbank back lot. With its all bright and cheery sitcom theme tune, the premise clearly was designed with a purpose.

The issue, and why it misfired so badly, is tone. This, if anything is the perfect example I can now point to for a pet theory of mine - that, with possible exceptions, no idea is too offensive or dumb or weird to work but execution is such an important factor. Premise wise, this is subversive - it is perverse to imagine Hitler having the pet name of "Mr. Sausage" by his wife Eva, the disgruntled housewife continually annoyed he is late to dinner constantly, all whilst the Goldensteins are even more fractured in terms of their married relationship. The men in this world do not come off well - lazy, drunk, ego driven - whilst the housewives, Eva and Rosa Goldenstein bond over Eva letting Rosa know Neville Chamberlain, the current Prime Minister of Britain, is coming over for dinner in a mischievous and improvised game of charades. Again, one of these people is Eva Braun, the other Jewish, which leaves an uncomfortable edge, but in among the wholesome but trite sitcom clichés. Hitler and Eva even have New York accents, despite being a British production, adding that sense, in a perverse alternative world, that this is not that different from when The Flinstones were created as a nuclear family sitcom depicted with animated cavemen. We in this actual world realise this is not the case, and it is uncomfortable, and there is meant to be a point to this.

And Hitler is still a putz here. Also the main plot is that Chamberlain is coming over, hoping over dinner to reprimand Adolf for being a naughty man for invading Czechoslovakia, thus adding a political edge that this pilot is a scathing take on Chamberlain's 1938-9 attempts at peace talks with Nazi Germany which backfired. Neville Chamberlain since his death has had the man whose peace talks were useless, leading to Hitler signing a treaty but still invading countries, and WWII still transpiring. This is still what he is known for nowadays and this pilot buries him and kicks him whilst down for good measure. Chamberlain, as old foolish man Rosa Goldenstein wants to push her dull niece Ruth onto, immediately shows how out of place he is when, asked about tea, he starts singing "I'm a little tea pot..." with the gestures like a child. It is broad, but it is subversive that, using this strange genre choice, the entire "Peace for Our Times" aspect of his career which doomed Chamberlain's reputation after his death is perfectly depicted by Hitler first trying to hide the treat in the fridge and, when Chamberlain finds out, just coxing him with nice words and signing it, as Adolf Hitler effectively did in real life whilst still invading countries.

The problem with Heil Honey is that most of it is not funny. It is a broad, deeply silly piece of characters being too deliberately comical when, for a darker turn, staying fully in the confines of the sitcom with significantly better jokes, whilst still tasteless, would have worked. The writing is not great for most parts of it, which is why so much of it instead comes off as awful on multiple levels. The tinges of darkness, even if depicted as light humoured, are still here like Hitler having to dismiss his own Aryan Nazi soldiers as being a gag by Joseph Goebbels for when Chamberlain first came to the airport, Goebbels off-screen even more incompetent for one of the funnier jokes, hand written sign for Chamberlain and all. I doubt the show could have lasted long, because just showing this pilot after Dad's Army, in a time slot where one is not warned of a subversive piece, was as much an ill advised decision, but as much of the issue, with knowledge that only a few titbits of the rest of the series made available online, that the production missed the delicate target completely.

There was discomfort shooting the production from those involved, and even after that Galaxy screening, which is the version that was recorded on tape and allowed people to see the pilot, you hear the announcer being caught off guard about how political it got, just expressing perfectly how one reacts to the show. It was uncomfortable to watch, even if aspects were difficult not to admit were amusing, but the result is a testament to the fact that, when handling delicate subject, taking risks but also tact is necessary. As much of my experience, only being twenty or so minutes long, was with grimacing as it was bemusement. In fact, I would have not been surprised if a tasteless take on the material, in a different time slot and era, might have been more successful and politically stronger in making the point it had, rather than arguably a more problematic work here that lost many immediately. This pilot, as a result, is never known as a failed experiment as political satire, but the misguided decision in, well, creating a light hearted sitcom about Adolf's home life that rightly offended many.