Czas Honoru or "Time of honor" in English, is a Polish tv series that I stumbled upon just recently. The show is about Polish soldiers trained in England by Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.), an organization specialized in sabotage and resistance in German occupied countries. Being airdropped back to Poland during the spring of 1941 these soldiers are join the underground resistance in Warsaw where they are needed in different lines of work.Counterfeiting German documents, assassinations on German collaborators, sabotage, and gathering of information and general conspiracy which causes lots of paranoia on who they can trust. Members of the conspiracy have pseudonyms and use contact persons and drop boxes.
The show depicts all aspects of life in Warsaw, with the random German roundups and executions on the streets, German officers living among the civilian population, "Volksdeutsche" having special privileges, the Warsaw Ghetto, the amount of people involved in the resistance in all sorts of ways. Storylines don't only show the Polish side but we get to follow both the Abwehr (German army intelligence) and Gestapo as well, see the Gestapo prison from the inside and their interrogation methods and the friction between the Abwehr and Gestapo.
There is a great cast of characters in this show, beside the 5 main characters dropped in from England, over the 3 seasons we also get a nice lineup of German "baddies" with the Abwehr major Martin Halbe being the bright spot during season 1 and later joined by Gestapo SS-Obersturmbannführer Lars Reiner during season 2 and 3. Reiner is a fantastic character, having worked for Interpol before the war he is more of a intelligent policeman than brute and there is lots of interesting and at times hilarious scenes with him and Halbe as they work their way through the Polish resistance.
The show has 3 seasons, and originally ended 2009, the ending of 3rd season was really meant to be the last season and you can see that by most of the plotlines being resolved (with an ending that is like a less moronic but similar to the Inglorious Basterds ending). However, the show has been renewed for one last, 4th , season which will start broadcasting this September. The last season makes a jump in time to 1944, which leaves it open to suggestion that the Warsaw Uprising could be covered in one way or the other.
The show was surprisingly enjoyable and is a good mix of drama and adventure. If I have to leave a complaint there are 2 things.
The first, the CGI of the very first episode will make you cringe - more specifically there is a brief sequence on a British airfield during season 1 first episode where there is a lineup of obviously fake planes. Luckily this is the only time anything like this occurs during the 3 seasons, and the locations and action throughout the remaining episodes is free of such jarring imagery.
The second, since it is a Polish tv series - obviously everyone speaks Polish. Not so bad when 80% of the cast is supposed to be Polish but this unfortunately stretches to the German characters as well. Though they keep using German names and military grades. The only time Germans speak German is when the audience sees something from the point of view of a character who can't speak German to highlight this.
A short rundown of the main storyline of the 3 seasons so far:
1 Season, acquiring contact with the underground resistance cells and start preparing people for the work ahead. Main storyline is about a planned jailbreak from the Gestapo prison. We also get to see how much damage a single person working for the Germans can do by spreading false information while gathering information for the Gestapo.
2 Season, Gestapo and Abwehr change their tactics. They recruit ex criminals into Gestapo service and release them as double agents which increases the paranoia. The resistance movement also plan a heist on the Reichsbank in Warsaw. Life in the Ghetto deteriorates.
3 Season, The resistance cell made up of the main characters is infiltrated by the Germans in a very clever way. Operations start to go wrong and wrong people are accused of working with the Germans. The 3rd season also sees the appearance of communist cells in Warsaw adding to the enemies of the Polish resistance.
Each season is 13 episodes with each episode being 45-50 minutes long.
And of course I would not write about any of this unless you could get the TV show with English subtitles. Having checked it out, all seasons on DVD have Polish speech and English subtitles as an option.
Depending on where you get these seasons from you can get away very cheap. The cheapest way is to order the boxed sets directly from Poland. Each season goes for 50zloty and depending on the webbshop the postage is usually the same. I ordered 2 sets of the series for myself and my buddy Calle from the http://www.punkt44.pl/film.html store.
The http://www.punkt44.pl/film.html shop in Poland has it with English subtitles (and the store is in Polish / English as well).
TRAILER (may contain spoilers)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxz2-pAJdSE
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