It is a marvelous show, but it is not true that there are no good TV series today, There was also a lot of crap TV back in the seventies. It's like saying there's no good music any more. There will always be good music and crap music.

It's a superb series with exemplary performances. I've watched it through several times. Yet, one aspect has always bothered me, the same aspect that bothered me with the film 'Enemy At The Gates,' The accents. It was difficult to distinguish Russians from the Germans in the film. Here, in the series, the Germans and English.

At least l have done all my home work this time

I remember a contemporary show of this called crossroads, so it wasn't all good back then.

@@frostyfrost4094 lol I was allowed to stay up an hour later than normal to watch this.

Still going strong at 90.

RIP to the man as he has passed away today at the age of 92yrs

He raised the tone of the entire decade.

Uyy

Well said

Great entertainment.

Samme as me

same here

Me to I'd the big lads In school talk about it.

*watched it in the early eighties, never appreciated just how subtle the intro theme is.

I SUSPECT THAT THE ACTIONS OF THE GERMAN ARMY GUARDS WERE INFLUENCED BY THE FACT(S): 1- THE GERMAN ARMY GUARDS KNEW THAT THE WAR WAS LOST, 2- THE GERMAN ARMY GUARDS SAW NO POINT IN INFURIATING THE ALLIED ARMY FORCES, AND THEN EXPECT TO SURRENDER TO THE ALLIED FORCES, AND, 3- THE GERMAN ARMY GUARDS KNEW THAT THE SS WOULD JUST AS SOON SHOOT THEM, AS THE SS WOULD SHOOT THE ENEMY!!!

@@daleburrell6273 WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING?

Ah. The 'Clean Wermacht' myth. Alive and strong

@@michaelswallow7399 ...FOR THE HELL OF IT-(?)

@@daleburrell6273 Upper case or capital letters is considered yelling in computer language. Fyi, no disrespect.

Well done. Loved that game.

well said, that generation had guts.......and backbone

Bkkbound Feels like a privilege because we're so used to being fed dumbed down drivel from the States

Great show. It is ashamed that we have to watch a show that is 45 years plus for entertainment.

Off from work at the moment and just watched all 28 episodes in the last week and thoroughly enjoyed them.i did see them originally when they first came out ,I was a lad of 14 then.wheres all that time gone?

supernumery While I understand that the pretence of madness was in order to escape, I found the manipulation of the German soldier’s emotions and distress caused to him and others to be a particularly cruel thing to do. The effect on the soldier whose brother was in a mental institution was particularly heartbreaking.

Simon England I was born in 1952. The behaviour of that POW was not justified because it achieved nothing while inflicting unnecessary suffering on others.. He ended up in a mental institution in England. It did nothing to help the war effort. You will note that in the episode the British officer in charge forbade any further attempts using that method. He was obviously as disgusted and distressed by it as I was.

@Simon England Yes I agree with you.

Bernard Hepton as the Kommandant and Jack Hedley as the colonel were fantastic. Hans Meyer was perfect as Ulmann.

@@johnking5174 Was there a bad actor in the whole series! Im still dazzled by how good it was.!

@@johnking5174 Hello John, I agree with you and a Momentous series. I watched it first time round in my early teens and was hooked also have been fascinated by the real escape attempts. When I retire I hope to visit Colditz castle. Kind regards Glynn n greetings from Stourbridge West Midlands 🤝

The main thing the British had against them was the fact none, save one or two, could speak German. Dutch escaped POWs from Colditz had a much better chance of remaining outside because most knew enough German to pass for one.

wow lucky u,id love that

Was the glider still there?

@@AudieHolland ...THAT'S THE TRUTH-!!!

@@AudieHolland and more obviously their countries were occupied so to see for example Dutch, French, Belgium anywhere in Germany was an everyday occurrence, whilst they they worked for the Reich. An English speaker was at a disadvantage from the off.

...and Colditz castle was in DDR (East Germany), under communist rule.

Excellent series, such a pity that it has been mainly forgotten

Agree on all points !!!!!

I did the same binge watched and you are right it is fantastic, I am like obsessed with the series , but how sad that all the actors are either dead or old, a person can not believe it in my mind they are still young and strong and such heroes!!

It's quite clear Hitler, his immediate staff, the SS and the Hitler youth were Nazis, all others were simply soldiers carrying out orders, a lot of them disagreeing or questioning actions of the Fuhrer but obviously silently.

@@malcolmclements9254 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht

@@malcolmclements9254 ...IT WAS MENTIONED THAT THE COMMANDANT WAS AN ARMY OFFICER WHO SERVED DURING WW1- HE WAS A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER.

Most Germans who were not Nazis didn't too much to oppose the Nazis.

@@wheelinthesky300 it’s easy for you to be flippant and highly critical. Most of the Germans during WWII who decided to question the Nazis ended up executed or in concentration camps.

YOU BETCHER LIFESAVERS!!!

Really why, withheld Red Cross parcels and medical supplies, approved the court martial of prisoners for petty offences, only turned when he knew which side his bread was buttered......

@@richardrichard5409 No, if you watched where the Flight Lt. was being courtmartialed, once the Kommandant learned that they were going to sentence the British Officer to death he worked hard between the scenes to prevent it!!! And then he made sure that the Doctor who insisted that the officer be charged for not saluting him was transferred! And the transferred was done in such a way that the next commanding officer for the doctor knew that the man was transferred in disgrace!!

@@richardrichard5409 nonsense

True, when I had finished watching it it felt as if old friends had gone away - for a few days i was absolutely obsessed by it........

It was a great series wasn't it? It is a shame it has not been repeated on television for ten years or so.

...AND IT WAS PRETTY GOOD, TOO-!!

@@johnking5174 it is it is such a sad, sad state of affairs that heroism like that has mainly been forgotten, we can not imagine what it must be like to be so patriotic and obsessed with gaining our freedom at all costs

The Kommandant aka Bernard Hepton acted the Classic German Officer!, Infact if any film wants to produce a WW2 movie or TV Series, they should refer to the Kommandant and also the British Officers Colonel Preston, Carrington etc. Brilliant acting on all sides.Even Major Mohn the Nazi Officer acted truly to the fanaticism of that period in Germany.

and Ullmann

it is as if they become one's personal friends!!!! I find myself wondering things like are they ok, and what are they doing, how is Cathy - lol all the characters came alive for me and I miss them!!

Stiff upper lip.

Quite moving as well, for those who had watched the whole series. At least for me.

@@guilhermegoncalves110 It was very sad when he told his wife that they were all alone in this world...

Are you still there? Or did you escape?

@@ABC_DEF No vun eskapes vom Coldiz

One of the the Best Things about it..Nooo background music.

Now that you mention it, I don't recall any background music beyond the beginning and end!

...YOU NEED TO REMEMBER THAT THE COMMANDANT WAS UNDER AN AWFUL LOT OF PRESSURE-(!)

@@daleburrell6273 oh the pressure was overwhelming,!😄

And he did get back to england as well

...THAT'S THE TRUTH-!!!!

Mohn is last seen escaping the castle, but we never saw him get killed or anything else, he simply vanishes into the darkness.

@@johnking5174 Yes - but I would have sworn that we saw him get shot or stabbed or something.. Weird how memory works. I must find some other old series and see if they are as I remembered them,

There was an American movie staring Doug McClure about the glider and an escape. It was not a very good movie, not very accurate. There are also several KZfaq videos; one of a group of Brits who built an exact replica of the glider and flew it many years later.

Durrington Dave Did he come out all right? He seemed alright in the show, in factI rather liked him. If he was like this in real life I'd hope nothing too bad had happened to him.

Durrington Dave yes they all looked in good health too

Thanks for that share!. he must have seen the horrors of the Eastern Front.

@@joewilson3575 After the liberation of Colditz Castle by the U.S. Army, Eggers retired from active service and returned to his post as a teacher in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, as he was able to prove that he had never joined the Nazi Party. He became a headmaster, and then a lecturer at Halle University. In September 1946, as he was in the Soviet Occupied Zone, he was arrested by the Russians and questioned about Gestapo agents in Colditz. Charged with crimes against humanity, spying and supporting a fascist regime, he was sentenced to ten years labour. This was spent in Sachsenhausen and then Torgau Prison.[3] During the years after this, Eggers was active in meeting with former Colditz inmates and writing his memoirs. He retired to live by Lake Constance, where he died in 1974, aged 84.[3]

what impressed me is that it just did not age, what was good in the 70's is even fantastic now in 2022

Captain Straker in Gerry Anderson's UFO.

@@malcolmclements9254 The man himself.

@@malcolmclements9254 ...and he provided the voice of Captain Blue- in "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons!!"

YOU'RE OVERLOOKING THE FACT THAT THE FRENCH HATED THE GERMANS ALMOST AS MUCH AS THE RUSSIANS!!! ONE DIFFERENCE, WAS THAT FRANCE WAS A SIGNATORY OF THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS- WHILE RUSSIA WAS NOT!!!

The Russians lost 20 million to the Germans and in the final days the Germans knew it, and feared it.

The German genocidal war in the East led to the deserved retribution by the Russians who almost single handedly won WWII.

Hell the Germans would have surrendered to the salvation army rather than the russians

@@malcolmclements9254 Yes, and no! Some of those deaths were actually the work of Stalin and his NKVD!!! Also, he let areas of the S.S.R. suffer under starvation because he thought they didn't fight the "Racists" as much as they should have!

...I'm pretty sure that formality had fallen by the wayside at Colditz: in the episode where Col. Preston arrived at Colditz, Col. Preston's batman snapped to attention- and an RAF officer said: "We don't go for that here, Corporal!"

and David McCallum served in the British Army's 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, he should have remembered where his kitbag went

Why would you do that when you can watch it here for free?

Many who controlled POW camps in Germany where of the old school, remember they were not SS or Gestapo, they were Wehrmacht, who had no love for the SS or Gestapo. That is not to say they were not bad, Wehrmacht had its fair share of brutes and committed many crimes, it is just they were not as awful as the SS or Gestapo.

They gave the old school guys crappy jobs like guarding POW camps because they didn't wan't them in more important positions undermining the new order of things. Also they had to keep up the veneer of abiding by the geneva convention to keep up appearances to the international Red Cross.

It's also just the nature of the Army, these were important positions that needed to be filled, and there were many senior officers who had advanced little in rank between the world wars and were to old for front line service by the start of the second world war. Old school is definitely one way of putting it, officers who served in the last months or year of WWI and managed to stay in the army during the Wiemar Republic.

...EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS!!!

@@TheSealOfTheRose ...YOU'RE PROBABLY RIGHT ABOUT THAT-!!!

Secret Army is even better than this.