Colditz - 1970s TV series

[Barry Izbak]

I have been trying to find copies of this brilliant TV drama from the 1970s on ebay and everywhere for ages.

And now I hear they are re-running the whole series on the Yesterday channel from tonight at 10pm.

Colditz Tuesday 26th October 10:00pm - 11:10pm

Yesterday

The Undefeated

1/15, series 1

First episode of the prison-camp drama, starring Edward Hardwicke as the British captain whose determination to escape eventually wins him a transfer to the Colditz castle.



Brilliant series. Looking forward to it big time

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I had the Colditz board game when I was a kid. Never worked out the rules or how to play it though - absolutely impossible.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

I had the Colditz board game when I was a kid. Never worked out the rules or how to play it though - absolutely impossible.

Wasn't too difficult, from what I remember. I never owned it, but I loved the game.

 

[jakarta]

I had the Colditz board game when I was a kid. Never worked out the rules or how to play it though - absolutely impossible.

Obviously it escaped you.......

 

[Nibble]

oops

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Errrr.......

 

[Nibble]

Umm...

 

[Gwylan]

I have been trying to find copies of this brilliant TV drama from the 1970s on ebay and everywhere for ages.

And now I hear they are re-running the whole series on the Yesterday channel from tonight at 10pm.

Colditz Tuesday 26th October 10:00pm - 11:10pm

Yesterday

The Undefeated

1/15, series 1

First episode of the prison-camp drama, starring Edward Hardwicke as the British captain whose determination to escape eventually wins him a transfer to the Colditz castle.



Brilliant series. Looking forward to it big time

Fantastic series: Bernard Hepton was the camp-commandant, the good German, and Anthony Valentine was the bad German.

Can't remember any of the other British prisoners though - I think Jeremy Kemp was one.

I remember a stonking episode where one of the prisoners pretended to be mad to be sent home. Eventually it worked... except he was really mad. That was a chilling episode.

EDIT: Just seen the cast list and David McCallum was in it, I thought he was and then reckoned I got mixed up with the Great Escape. Jack Hedley was the British commander and how could I forget Richard Wagner? I see Jim Norton (Bishop Brennan) was in it too

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Excellent theme tune as well...

[yt]1aT5gGDA59k[/yt]

 

[MOG]

Listed on Amazon.

Available for pre-order. This item will be released on 15 November 2010.

1. Colditz - The Complete BBC Collection (with 5 Limited Edition Art Cards & Collector's Booklet) [DVD] Starring Jack Hedley, Edward Hardwicke, and Robert Wagner (DVD - 2010)
£36.93

 

[skipper734]

From this

to this

You couldn't make it up. Same goes for all the tales to come out of Clolditz

 

[User removed 4]

Fantastic series: Bernard Hepton was the camp-commandant, the good German, and Anthony Valentine was the bad German.

Can't remember any of the other British prisoners though - I think Jeremy Kemp was one.

I remember a stonking episode where one of the prisoners pretended to be mad to be sent home. Eventually it worked... except he was really mad. That was a chilling episode.

EDIT: Just seen the cast list and David McCallum was in it, I thought he was and then reckoned I got mixed up with the Great Escape. Jack Hedley was the British commander and how could I forget Richard Wagner? I see Jim Norton (Bishop Brennan) was in it too

sorry mate, i cant help myself , but its ROBERT wagner.

 

[Gwylan]

sorry mate, i cant help myself , but its ROBERT wagner.

D'oh. It was writing about Germans that did that - Richard Wagner would, of course, have been on the other side.

 

[portlock seagull]

Picking the dog up from my in laws today, my f in law was watching it and I caught a clip of the courtyard where Mr Bronson from grange hill was zee german commandant threatening zee allied prisoners if zee culprits did not stepz forward!! Didn't half get around did Mr Bronson. Teacher. Nazi. And galatic imperial toboot!

 

[Blackadder]

Watching it at the moment. Brings back memories of my childhood.

As it's a period piece, it doesn't seem to age.

 

[rcf0712]

Wasn't too difficult, from what I remember. I never owned it, but I loved the game.

me too, spent a lot of time at a friend's house playing that in my early teens I believe....

 

[ironacton]

I had the Colditz board game when I was a kid. Never worked out the rules or how to play it though - absolutely impossible.

The rules weren't too bad, but when we played no one ever wanted to be the guards such a boring role. Best part was the do or die cards... oh the memories

 

[Storer68]

Now, bizarrely, a rather nice youth hostel

April 8, 2007

Escape from Colditz Castle Hotel
They’ve opened a youth hostel in the world’s most famous PoW camp 151; but can it hold Stephen Bleach?Stephen Bleach
Last Sunday, I became the first Englishman to check in at Colditz castle since 1945. And then I did what any Englishman with a bit of pluck would do next: I waited for the cover of darkness and escaped.

As an exercise in sheer pointlessness, this might seem to be up there with modern jazz and telling children to be quiet, but bear with me. When you know the circumstances, it might make sense. The circumstances are these.

Colditz was the most notorious PoW camp of the second world war. The Wehrmacht declared it escape-proof; the allied inmates proved them fulsomely wrong, staging a string of break-outs so daring and audacious that they inspired a film, a TV series, even a board game. In short, it’s a British icon, a part of our heritage that just happens to be marooned in Saxony.

Now the castle that was once intended to stop foreign guests leaving is inviting us back — this time on a voluntary basis. Last week, in a move that is bound to spawn a thousand “This place is like a prison camp” gags, they opened a youth hostel inside the castle walls. This I had to see.

It had occurred to me that the youth hostellers had opened up an intriguing possibility. If they let you stay in, it meant you could break out. What better tribute to the heroes of my youth than to follow in their surreptitious footsteps?

What I didn’t anticipate was being part of one of the biggest mass escapes the castle has ever seen. But more of that later.

COLDITZ CASTLE is huge, a hodgepodge of buildings constructed over 500 years. The 34-room hostel is in a 19th-century portion that housed the Kommandantur, the German garrison’s wartime HQ. Not much for nostalgics here: with ruthless efficiency, the government of Saxony has restored the original facade, but rebuilt the inside from the bottom up, and all traces of its previous character — of any character, come to that — have been expunged. It’s modern, clean and efficient. It’s also slightly shocking, as if they’d plonked a Travelodge inside the Tower of London.

That hardly matters, though, because most of the castle is gloriously unrestored. Of the mind-boggling 680 rooms, most of them temptingly out of bounds, many still bear the scars of those wartime escapes. I joined a guided tour with the erudite Renate Lippmann. Smile very nicely and, as well as the public exhibits (escape tools, rope ladders, provisions and so on), she’ll lead you round some off-limits scenes of the castle’s celebrated break-outs. I wanted to marvel at the inventiveness and audacity of those escapes — but, more than that, I wanted to learn from their example. For me, this tour was going to double as a recce.

We climbed the old spiral staircase to the theatre, scene of many a PoW production (they involved a disturbing amount of cross-dressing) and launch pad for the first British “home run”: Airey Neave hid under the stage before carving a hole through the floor (still there, by the way), chucking on a fake German uniform and strolling out past the guards. Tempting, but I didn’t have time to run up a youth-hostel polo shirt.

Renate showed us the attic where the Colditz glider was built, a full-sized two-seater secretly assembled by two British pilots. Nope — paper planes are my technical limit. Then there was the wine cellar and chapel, where the French dug a mazy 140ft tunnel that snaked under floorboards, through solid rock and into the castle’s foundations. A classic well worth emulating — but the spoon I’d brought for digging wouldn’t be up to the task.

Finally, beyond a maze of security fences and “keep out” notices, she allowed us into the small cellar from where Pat Reid, master escaper, and three fellow officers squeezed and scrambled their way to freedom through a tiny air vent 9ft above the floor. Bingo! This one I could handle. All I’d need would be the cover of darkness and some accomplices to help with a leg-up. BY 3AM, I had both. Andy Russell and his pals were Colditz enthusiasts on a long weekend, staying at a hotel nearby. We met that evening in the town, having discovered a mutual interest in the local brews. (Don’t knock it: bonding over a bevvy is a British tradition around here. The inmates used makeshift stills to produce hooch out of raisins. It turned their teeth brown, though.) A plan was developed. Andy and co would sneak in under the castle’s back gate — we’d already spotted a good 8in gap — and we’d rendezvous at the cellar. The objective: no disturbance, no damage. Like our role models, we’d go undetected. We’d better. If the nightwatchman nabbed us, I anticipated a severe sense-of-humour failure.

One by one, we stole across the moonlit cobbles, slid around fences and boards, then crept to the cellar. The vent was even higher and narrower than it had looked by day. Reid had been forced to strip naked to squeeze through. We’d try to do it decently: the popular press were kinder then, and we could see “nude vent orgy” headlines looming. Andy, an ex-soldier and a natural leader, took off his jacket, got a leg-up from Ian, and went for it.

Well, it wasn’t easy. We were in that cellar for more than an hour. Dave, in particular, had a hard time, stuck fast for 20 minutes; for once, I was grateful to be a skinny beggar, sliding out in 60 seconds. Finally, with pushing from below and pulling from above, six Englishmen had emulated Pat Reid — if you can compare evading 150 armed guards and crossing hundreds of miles of hostile territory to evading one bored nightwatchman and getting a Ryanair flight back to Stansted. Which, of course, you can’t.

IN THE MORNING, I went to check out, and Herr Steinbach, the hospitable manager, took my key. After a chat about the hostel, I slipped in the question I’d been leading up to. Wasn’t he concerned that his British guests might try to escape?

He looked nonplussed. “But . . . ” he mumbled, holding up the wooden fob I’d just surrendered, “ . . . you have a key, you see.”

While the modern Germans are an admirable nation, from whom we could learn much, make no mistake: there is still a gulf of understanding between us. Herr Steinbach is right — hostel guests can come and go as they please — but if he thinks his British guests won’t at least be tempted to Escape from Colditz, he’s got another think coming. Keys? As our American allies would have said, keys are for wimps.

Travel details: Colditz Castle youth hostel (00 49 351 494 2211, Liebst Du Schweden? Entdecke Sachsen!Liebst du Schweden? Entdecke Sachsen! DJH Jugendherbergen in Sachsen | Jugendherbergen in Sachsen) has rooms from £17pp, B&B (£15pp if you’re under 26). Tours of the castle cost £4.75. Ryanair (Cheap Flights to Europe with Ryanair - Cheap Flights from UK) flies from Stansted to Altenburg, 40 minutes’ drive away. Europcar (0870 607 5000, Car Hire and Van Hire from Europcar UK) has three days’ car hire from £95.

 

[Brovion]

Ever since I saw the TV series it was the one place in the world that I really wanted to visit. Of course back in the 70s it was in East Germany and it might as well have been on the moon for all the chance I had of going. Then the Wall came down and I was able to visit the town of Colditz in 1995 when I was touring Germany with Attila. The castle was shut but after begging and pleading and all but lying that my Dad had been there they opened it specially for me. It was brilliant as my guide kept unlocking and then locking the doors behind us as we went round. It was all too easy to pretend that I was a captured British officer being lead off to solitary confinement after a failed escape attempt.

Because at that time it wasn't really open to the general public it the whole place had very melancholy, run-down air. The highlight was seeing the loft where they built the glider - which sadly wasn't there (They think the Russians removed it after the war).

 

[highway61]

Watching it at the moment. Brings back memories of my childhood.

As it's a period piece, it doesn't seem to age.

Just watching tonights episode, it really is good stuff, yes it brings back memories for me too. There is something about drama of this ilk, Secret Army being another. Some darned good actors in these series carry it for me. Love Hepton, Wagner and Macallum. well worth repeat showings