8.4 /10 1 Votes
100% Rotten Tomatoes Based on SS-GB
by Len Deighton First episode date 19 February 2017 Language English Number of episodes 5 | 6.6/10 IMDb Created by Len Deighton Directed by Philipp Kadelbach Network BBC One Number of seasons 1 Program creator Len Deighton | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Genre Alternative history
Thriller Written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade Starring Sam Riley
Kate Bosworth
James Cosmo Similar The Art of More, The Secret Agent, One of Us, Power Games: The Pack, The Durrells | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SS-GB is a 2017 British drama series produced for the BBC and based on the 1978 novel of the same name by Len Deighton. It is set in a 1941 alternative timeline in which the United Kingdom is occupied by Nazi Germany, having lost the Battle of Britain.
Contents
Plot
In this Alternate World, it is November 1941, nine months after a successful German invasion of Britain. Douglas Archer, a highly successful Scotland Yard detective, is working under a German superior. As a homicide detective, Archer avoids involvement in political crime. He views resistance as pointless and hopes the German occupation will end soon.
A routine murder investigation becomes political when it turns out that the victim had data on British efforts to produce an atomic bomb. The resistance appear to have killed the man. (In actual history, it was two refugee Jewish scientists in Britain who made the key breakthrough. The Frisch–Peierls memorandum of March 1940 revealed that a nuclear weapon could be made with about a kilogram of material, rather than several tons as most people believed then.)
Archer also finds himself working under an SS man sent from Berlin. He is valued because he speaks fluent German, though he does not sympathise with Nazism. He had volunteered to fight in the war, but was in a reserved occupation. His wife was killed by German bombing. His son is being cared for by his landlady, whose husband was a soldier and is still a prisoner of war. His secretary and girlfriend Sylvia Manning is a member of the resistance and has to flee early in the first episode.
Winston Churchill has been executed. King George is a prisoner and has not been seen in public for some time. His wife and his daughters Elizabeth and Margaret escaped, while the Duke of Windsor, who had earlier abdicated as Edward VIII, is in exile. A British government in exile exists but is not recognised by the USA.
Nazi Germany has also maintained friendly relationships with the Soviet Union. Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov has just flown in to oversee the removal of the body of Karl Marx to the Soviet Union.
The fate of British Jews is not mentioned, except you see in passing one man wearing a yellow star. Historically, plans for the deportation of Jews from Germany and the occupied countries began taking shape before the Fall of France.
Production
In November 2014, it was announced that the BBC had commissioned writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to adapt Len Deighton's novel SS-GB.
In August 2015, it was announced that Sam Riley was in talks to star in the lead role of Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer of Scotland Yard. Riley's casting was confirmed in late September 2015.
Production began in October 2015 and ended in January 2016. The series was produced by Sid Gentle Films Ltd. It was broadcast on BBC One in five one-hour episodes, between 19 February 2017 and 19 March 2017.
Allied and Resistance characters
German characters
Reception
The series received mixed reviews, with criticism predominantly regarding the sound quality and inaudible dialogue in the first episode, which the BBC pledged to "look at" for future episodes.