Heil Honey I’m Home, 1990
In the world of “forgotten sitcoms” this must rank as better best forgotten.
It’s 1990 the age of the Squarial and BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting). Premiering on the Galaxy Channel, Heil Honey I’m Home was to have run for 11 episodes. Of the planned 11, only 8 were recorded and only the pilot episode made it to TV, after the show was cancelled immediately after.
The show was hugely controversial and has gone on to become one of the most controversial programs ever to be screened in the UK, courting condemnation from all quarters. Despite this even today the show has reached such a level of infamy that it still gets discussed in incredulous terms on retrospective programmes.
The show was conceived as a spoof — not of the Third Reich, but of the kind of sitcoms produced in the United States between the 1950s and 1970s “that would embrace any idea, no matter how stupid”. There were better ways of spoofing the time period.
Summary
The first episode opens with a caption card explaining Heil Honey‘s fictional back-story: it supposedly comprises the rediscovered “lost tapes” of an abandoned, never-aired American sitcom created by “Brandon Thalburg Jnr”.
The premise is it’s Berlin 1938 and Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun are living next door to Jewish couple Arny and Rosa Goldstein.
Clips
Cast
Neil McCaul – Adolf Hitler
DeNica Fairman – Eva Braun (pilot episode)
Maria Fieldman – Eva Braun (un-aired episodes)
Gareth Marks – Arny Goldenstein
Caroline Gruber – Rosa Goldenstein
Details
Channel: Galaxy
Written By: Geoff Atkinson
Original Transmission Date: 30th September 1990