Heil Honey I'm Home!

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Heil Honey I'm Home! was a short-lived and controversial British television sitcom, produced in 1990.

The show was centred on fictionalised versions of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who lived together in suburban bliss, until the day their lives are turned upside-down by their new neighbours, the Goldensteins, who are Jewish. The show's plots inevitably centered around Hitler's inability to get along with his neighbours. A caption at the beginning of the episode presented the series as a 'lost' sitcom from the 50s, recently re-discovered. The show spoofed elements of 1950s and 1960s American sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy, including the corny title, plot and dialogue that was light to the point of vacuous, and unwarranted applause whenever a character appeared on screen.

The plot of episode 1 involved Adolf telling Eva of the nearing arrival of Neville Chamberlain, and begging her not to tell the Goldensteins. Of course, Eva lets it slip to Rosa that Chamberlain (the most important man in Europe) is coming round and Rosa tells Arny. They then crash the dinner party the Hitlers have prepared for Chamberlain.

The programme was written by Geoff Atkinson and commissioned by satellite television channel Galaxy, part of British Satellite Broadcasting (which later became part of BSkyB). It was shown at 9.30pm on a Monday night, after an episode of Dad's Army. During the credits of Dad's Army, Galaxy's announcer said 'the man himself after the break as the Galaxy comedy weekend continues.'

The programme proved controversial when first aired, it was seen by many as being in very poor taste. It was accused of crassly trivialising Nazism. Although others have defended it as being in the same tradition of Third Reich parodies as 'Allo 'Allo! and Hogan's Heroes, or along similar lines to the portrayal of Hitler as a domestic fool in The Producers. They also point out the crassness was intentional, and part of the parody anyway.

Altogether, eight episodes were produced but only one was ever screened; the furore that accompanied the first episode led BSB to pull the remaining 7 shows that were filmed, and they have not seen the light of day since. The show has since become renowned as one of the most controversial programmes ever to have been screened in the UK; it listed at #61 on Channel 4's The 100 Greatest TV Moments from Hell.