June 6, 2025 • 55 mins
In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we dive into the explosive first season of X Company — the 2015 Canadian WWII drama about five secret agents trained at Camp X, Canada's spy training camp. From high-stakes sabotage in occupied France to moral grey zones and surprise betrayals, we explore what makes this little-known show so gripping. We talk about the character arcs we love, historical accuracy, and the surprisingly brutal tone. Expect fake dating, trauma flashbacks, Nazi hypocrisy, and that one guy from Schitt’s Creek.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm.
And we like World War 2 media, and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the reviewer.
This week we are talking about the first season of the TV show
X Company, which came out in 2015.
(00:22):
It was created by Mark Ellis andStephanie Morgenstern, and it
ran for three seasons on the CBC.
It follows 5 fictional recruits at Camp XA Real training camp
for covert agents during World War 2 on the North Shore of Lake
Ontario in Canada. We're going to cover each season
in its own episode. So what did you think of the
first season of X Company? I wish I'd known the show
(00:44):
existed before we started duringthis podcast, just because it's
so good. I really enjoyed this show.
And Speaking of, I want to thankRobin Bowers or Robin Bowers.
I don't know if you pronounce your name in Dutch or in
English, but she recommended theshow to us being Canadian and
Dutch, which is quite cool sincewe are Canadian and Dutch and I
(01:05):
don't know when I started watching after doing some
sleuthing to try and find a way to watch it.
I didn't really get into it for the first two episode and then
for some reason I was hooked andnow I just want there to be more
of it than there is. I really liked it.
I was really surprised that it'squite heavy, it features some
(01:28):
quite dark stuff and they don't really shy away from it.
And for some reason I was ready to compare this to a CW show,
Which it's quite superficial usually, but this show is not.
And I don't know about the CBC. You can probably tell me is it
usually this dark? No, I was not expecting this.
(01:48):
I'll be honest, I really thoughtwe were going to get more of a
lighter tone for this when I watched it.
Come facts. It's basically the SRE of
Canada. I would say.
It feels like that to me. Would that be what it is?
Well, actually a lot of SOE agents trained at Camp XA, sort
of training camp for SOE agents,and they also recruited Canadian
(02:10):
locals and they also trained trainers who went on to train
people at the OSS, which is the predecessor of the CIA.
So they had a few different things going on.
It's one of those things that I've never heard of before.
So the more you know once you dothis broadcast, how about you?
I mean, like I said, I was not sure what to expect going into
this. CBC in the past few years has
(02:33):
had, I would say, more misses than hits, unfortunately.
But the CBC is known for Schitt's Creek, which was
obviously quite a famous comedy a few years ago.
And yeah, I don't know, I was expecting sort of more of that
vibe a little bit maybe a sort of Avenger's esque found family
situation or maybe like you weresaying this a little bit slick
and sexy sort of CW group ensemble situation.
(02:55):
But it's not really like that. I mean, I find that you can tell
there is quite a lot of historical research done.
Even the little bits and pieces in the background are correct.
And the characters all have their own individual character
arcs. I find it's pretty well written
in that way. It's like you said, it's dark in
places. They really don't pull any
(03:15):
punches. It can be quite startlingly
violent. And the characters are a little
morally nuanced. I mean, they are are
protagonists and they are the quote UN quote heroes of the
show, but they also do things that are reprehended sometimes
and I really enjoyed it. I think it's a really good
watch. If you haven't ever heard of X
Company before, and I don't blame you.
(03:36):
It's not a super famous show, but you should try and find
somewhere where you can watch itbecause it's quite good.
It does have, Speaking of Schitt's Creek, it does have
Dustin Milligan who was in Schitt's Creek in it.
So there is that. I always want to say this show
kind of deserves a little bit ofa content warning thinking about
it, because there's a lot of blood, there's some assault,
(03:56):
there's a lot of violence. So if you're sensitive to that,
be aware that they show it all on this TV show.
It's not not very censored at all.
I think that's good, but some people might find it slightly
startling. Yeah, no, absolutely.
So let's get into the show. Episode 1 of Season 1 starts in
(04:25):
France in 1942 in a village called Via Mari.
We meet the team, starting with Britt New McKay, played by
Warren Brown. He's our favorite.
He's an explosive expert. And we also meet radio operator
Harry James, played by Connor Price, American Ed man John
Cummings, played by Dustin Milligan.
And we meet second in command Aurora left, played by Evelyn
(04:48):
Boroschi. She is German and French
Canadian and they are led by thehandsome leading man and also
Aurora's love interest in the Navy lead by Francois Arnold.
Yeah, we lead off, we get right into the action.
The first episode's pretty action-packed and you get a
(05:09):
little bit of a sense of the format of the show, so it's kind
of a mission of the week type thing, but there's also an
overarching plot that's taking place in the background.
I was just going to say they do this pretty much every time.
We're just dropped right into the mission.
There's not very often much of Alead up to anything.
They just, there's another mission and they're on it
(05:29):
already. So I thought that's quite
interesting. You never get like, I wonder
what our next mission is going to be now.
We're already in the middle of it, so it's quite nice.
Yeah, I quite like that show don't tell aspect.
You know, it's not like boring briefings and stuff like that.
I like that. The makeup of the team they
have. I mean, Aurora is German, but
she's also French Canadian and obviously we have an American on
(05:50):
the team and a Brit on the team.And Camp X was kind of like
that. I had people from all over
famous alumni like Roald Dahl and Paul Den who wrote
Goldfinger and Murder on the Orient Express would train at
Camp X. There's also some anecdotal
stories about Ian Fleming maybe training there, but we don't
know for sure if that's true. But you know, it's kind of fun
(06:10):
as a little a little intrigue. But it was perhaps most useful
because it's location permitted the hiring of Hungarian,
Yugoslavian, Russian, French, Italian, Japanese and other
foreign language speaking nationals from multicultural
centers like Toronto and Montreal who could be dropped
into occupied countries to foment resistance and help out
people on the ground there. I don't understand how I'd never
(06:33):
heard of this before. Like why did you unknown?
I think that after World War 2 they destroyed a lot of the
records. The physical location was put to
a different use and a lot of thepeople who worked there and went
through the camp were smart to secrecy.
So similarly to the SOEA, lot ofthem just kept their mouth shuts
(06:54):
and took it to the grave with them.
I. Think it's kind of sad that you
are so close to it. Yeah, there's nothing left of
it. I'm like why?
I know it's super unfortunate, but I think on the website I've
seen that they have like a little tour of the area or
something. I think that would be neat to
check out. Definitely recruit someone and
turn them into a World War 2 aficionado and take them with
(07:17):
you. Yeah, the group of them, their
arrival in the village has resulted in a resistance fighter
getting caught by the Nazis, andthey must race against time to
blow up a bridge, killing the local Nazis before they can
retaliate against the local population for helping the
resistance. So this is the kind of high
stakes stuff that they're getting up to every episode.
(07:38):
I've already forgotten whether this thing I'm about to say is
in this show. I think it is.
Doesn't it start with a little kid being held at gunpoint and
being told if you stop saluting I'll shoot you?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's this episode.
No, you're right. Do you tell the story?
(07:59):
Because it's very indicative of what kind of show this is.
You know, in some shows they like go easy on the kids, right?
They're like, we cannot do this to your child and we cannot try
this on TV. But there's a child and I think
she's painted some resistant symbol onto the laundry or
something and she gets caught and and now she kind of appears
(08:22):
and tells her, well, now we can make an example of you.
We've got to. We've got to punish you.
And she has to. And the Nazi salute, I believe,
if I remember correctly, and theNazi tells her, if you stop
saluting, I will shoot you or the other guy will shoot you
because I'm not a Nazi. And he ends up showing her
mercy. But you're like, this is how the
(08:44):
show opens. It's so tense.
Yeah, super brutal. And you're like, OK, I see.
So we're not even, not even the kids get off Scott free on this
show. And this is not a 16 year old.
This is like a 7 year old. This is a very small child.
Absolutely. But I mean, I guess if nothing
(09:04):
else, indicative of the true brutality and ruthlessness of
the Nazis right off the bat. Yeah, it's very true.
And I thought that this Nazi that showed her mercy, I thought
he was going to be a main character.
But I think that I've had a lot of characters in this show and
they don't stick around for reallife.
Yeah, they come and go, and there are as well.
(09:25):
I mean, obviously all the main characters are fictional, but
sometimes in the background, every now and again, there will
be a real figure from history, you know?
We get a nice little animated transition and we move back to
Camp XI. Want to say this is the only
part where you can kind of see it's low budget.
It's the animation in this, it'skind of wonky, but anyway, it's
(09:46):
a nice way to kind of show you you're moving from France back
to Canada. So back at Camp X in Ontario, we
meet Duncan Sinclair, which is the leader of leaders, played by
Hugh Dillon. He's the CEO and he's trying to
recruit Alfred Graves, played byJack Lasky, with a nervous young
man with synesthesia and a photographic memory.
(10:08):
As you can imagine, if you're a secret agent, it would be quite
useful to have these skills. We also need Sergeant Christina
Breeland, played by Lara Jean Jarastati, and she's the team's
behind the scenes layers on at the home base.
She's cool. I like her.
I love Christina, she's one of my favorite characters and she
(10:28):
also turns out to be kind of a hard ass later on.
I feel like they all are. I have to say, at this base
there's quite a few women that seem to be holding on the Fort.
Yeah, for sure. They're doing a lot of the radio
operator stuff and the encrypting and decrypting and
all that. Besides being a training
facility for secret agents, CampX was also a centralized radio
(10:53):
and telecommunications center. It was called Hydra, and you see
it in the show. It's this big transmitter and it
was designed to transmit messages between the United
States, Canada, Great Britain, South America.
It could transmit messages all over the world.
And many parts for Hydra were scavenged secondhand.
And many of the radio operators who ended up working at Camp X
were actually recruited from amongst amateurs who were known
(11:16):
in hobby circles for being particularly gifted
transmitters. And obviously we see some women
doing that work in the show. And the transmissions were
encrypted by the Rock X cipher machine, which was designed by
another Canadian and engineer named Benjamin Deforest Bailey.
And so I thought it was really cool that in the show they stuck
to that true history and we got to see all that stuff happening
(11:37):
in the background. It's funny because I read the
word hydride, not really picked up on it on the show and all I
can think about is Captain America.
Yeah, but this hydra is a good one.
So the name of the CEO is DuncanSinclair.
I think Sinclair is a nod to Sinclair House, which was an old
farmhouse that was on the Camp Xproperty already when it was
(11:57):
purchased by the government. Very cool.
I really like this CR character.He's a tough guy, but he's also
quite soft so I like that little.
He's like the dad of the group. He really is.
He's like the dad who's tough but fair on the group, but he
also makes some pretty wild decisions throughout the course
of the show. Yes, he does.
And just a little explanation for those of you who would like
(12:21):
to know a little bit more about Alfred and his condition
synesthesia. When you have synesthesia, your
brain roots sensory information through multiple unrelated
sentences causing you to experience more than one sense
simultaneously. So some people I know kind of
attribute colors to numbers or weekdays or something like that.
(12:44):
And I feel like with Alfred, he kind of gets everything all at
once so he can taste words and he can see lots of colors and
shapes and all that. So it's very neat, but also I
feel like it's totally made-up for the show.
Yeah, I mean, it does factor into this romantic plot line he
has with Aurora later where he doesn't want to say her name
(13:06):
because it has all these relations to other things in his
head. And then he does say her name
and it's the whole thing. I do like the way they use his
ability to also have an experienced trauma in different
ways and work at you later. But there's some torture, money
has to kill someone, something happens and it's all related to
(13:28):
my senses and I quite like the way they used it.
Yeah, I like that too. Well, and to wrap up the first
episode, Renee, our fearless team leader, is shot and
presumed dead. Oh no, I mean I feel like we
barely even got to know him. Yeah.
Farewell, Renee. We hardly knew.
Yes. He's only there to look pretty,
(13:48):
really. Yeah, Well, I feel like in this
episode, too, we get to see, like, it's Harry who kind of
fucks up the explosive device asthe Nazis are coming and he's
trying to fix it. And Renee is like, you know,
like, blow the bridge, blow the bridge.
And it's this whole thing where it's like, very tense.
But we get to see some of the characters be kind of new and
(14:09):
inexperienced at their job. And then as the show goes on,
they progress and they get better.
In some cases they get like harder personality wise.
And so I enjoyed that aspect too.
If we look at the this crew, if we talk about Harry for a
second, because he's kind of thebaby of the group, they keep
saying he's a Ted. He doesn't look like a Ted.
(14:30):
I feel like he's in his trances,but everybody else thinks he's
not up for the job. But he is up to a point, I
guess. I don't know who my favorite
character was after this first episode, but I think it's Neil.
I just think it's still Neil even after two seasons.
Well. Acceptable.
(14:51):
I also like Neil. So as you can tell, we're not
really spoiling the entire episode for you.
I mean, we're spoiling some bits, but you can definitely go
and watch it because these episodes are 45 minutes long, so
they're quite good. Yeah, it's a proper thriller
drama situation. So episode 2.
(15:18):
They've recruited Alfred at thispoint and he's reluctantly
joined the team for a mission tocharter.
I can't pronounce this either. Which is also France to steal
German coast that will allow theAllies to predict German bombing
rates. Pretty cool, but he has a bit of
a shaky start. But he acquits himself pretty
well and well enough to be invited to be a permanent member
(15:40):
of the team, so there's that. Aurora has ascended to team
leader, which, I mean, she was asecond in command before, so it
makes sense. But it's nice that her skills
are valued enough by other members of the team that they're
not. Like, would we have a girl
leading us, you know? No, they trust her.
She's kind of to them. She's the glue of that group.
(16:02):
Yeah, I mention it in some episodes as well, where it
doesn't really work without her.So I quite like that she gets to
be that central piece in a group.
I also like how real she is to be team leader because the
reason she's my team leader is because Renee's dead and she's
upset about this. I feel like Christian, I
reiterate. She loves him very much and he's
(16:24):
dead and she's like very upset about it.
Yeah, for sure. And I like that they made it
that she was reluctant to be team leader for that reason and
not because she didn't think shewas up to the job or not because
she wasn't tough enough. Because listen, this lady's
pretty fucking ruthless. The next thing I have so is that
(16:44):
they encounter some suspicious locals who are this family, the
husband, the wife and the kid. And the husband works for the
Vichy regime. And so the team is worried that
these people are gonna rat them out.
And Aurora is like, oh, I'll shoot them next.
She literally is like, she doesn't care.
She's like, we got to do our mission.
Sorry that these people got in the way, I guess.
(17:06):
And then we get to also learn a little bit more about Tom, our
American advertising man, because he's like, well, how
would you let me talk to them? And I'll try and talk them
around. And he ends up manipulating them
by lying to them. The wife believes that her
husband was killed in an Allied bombing raid.
And he's like, actually, what you don't know is that the
Germans sabotage that factory toturn the French populace against
(17:28):
the Allies. And afterwards someone's like,
oh, is that true? He's like, no, 100% just made
that up to manipulate them. But we get to see, you know,
that sort of aspect of his personality.
But also that Aurora was the onewho was like, I don't care.
This is time consuming. I'm leaving you figure this out
or shoot them. I don't care.
The show does a great job makingthem face tough decisions
(17:52):
without giving them an out. There are real problems and they
always have to solve them and there's no way out for them.
I think that's a desperate, goodrider that's not lazy in that
ride. And this episode's good too,
because it really sets up one ofthe team's overall objectives is
to build resistance on the ground in occupied countries.
So this is kind of the first time we see them starting to
(18:13):
work with the locals and that kind of stuff.
Episode 3 The team goes to Poitier, still in France, to
rescue a physicist with important weapons research who's
been kidnapped by the Nazis. With Thomas for backup, Aurora
(18:34):
and Tom seem to be this kind of team very often in the show.
They do little cons together with Aurora doing most of the
conning and Tom being there mostly for backup.
Aurora goes and seduces a Nazi career to steal the scientist
research, but then she goes off playbook and kills it's a
high-ranking Gustavo officer known as the Bleeder by kind of
(18:59):
seducing him and then he almost assaults her and then she's
like, wait a second, I'm not going to let this happen to me.
Fuck you now you're going to die.
This episode just completely threw me.
I was not expecting this to happen at all.
There's also a little mention ofa gay natty in it that obviously
(19:21):
the Nazis didn't like old peoplevery much.
So this natty, he's hiding his gayness.
And Aurora kind of helps, helps him a little even though he's a
Nazi. But she doesn't help other
Gustafa, known as the Bleeder because he he's a nasty piece of
shit. And I really like the way she
answers. Yeah, well, even because they
(19:42):
had sort of discussed earlier onthat he might be present and
they all agreed they were like, we're not going to kill him.
He's he's too high value as a Nazi.
Like if we do that, we're kind of going to blow our cover and
then Aurora ended up killing himanywhere.
I suddenly had a realization, but it's something to do with
season 2, so I won't talk about it yet.
(20:03):
But just so you know, just I'm just referencing this now that
something they say in this episode about him being a
high-ranking guy. And that having consequences.
Welcome back in in Season 2. Yeah, for sure.
And I like what you said about Aurora and Tom frequently
working together because they'rethe more, I think, polished face
(20:25):
of the team. They seem to be a little bit
more able to talk their way in and out of situations.
They're better at undercover work, whereas Neil's a bit more
of the bruiser type. He's kind of the one who gets
things done in the background. Obviously Harry has the
technical knowledge. He's the radio operator and that
kind of stuff, and they're kind of starting to figure out how to
(20:47):
fit Alfred into the team, too. I didn't really like Tom at the
beginning of the season, I thought he was quite like smooth
and also not that useful. But I, I, I've changed my mind
by now. So sorry John, I like you now.
Well, Harry, Neal and Alfred managed to extract the physicist
and Alfred makes his first kill,which as you discussed before,
(21:10):
is a pretty big deal for him. I like what they do because
Alfred has been training with Neil on how to kill people and
how to disarm them and then shoot them.
And as he kills this German thathe has to kill, he flashes back
to the training with Neil and I quite like how to do that and
show it. They do clever little things
(21:33):
visually as well. For something being a low budget
show, they kind of mask it by having really cool storytelling
tricks, which makes you forget that it's a low budget show.
Yeah, I would say you don't often notice that it's low
budget. It was not something that I
really thought much about and in.
This episode we also need our big time Casabelle guy, France
(21:56):
Faber, played by Turban Librecht, who is kind of our
seasons Betty and you will end up trying to chase the team
down, but he has a secret because he's hiding a disabled
son, which in case you don't know something else, the Nazis
did not look favorable upon. No, definitely.
We see that he is literally hiding his son from other Nazis
(22:20):
because his son has Down syndrome.
So he's visually you can tell that he's disabled.
And so the other Nazis have never even seen his son.
He's just keeping him completelyunder wraps.
His son's name is Uli. I, I'd like to early, but I have
to say when, when I saw this scene, it gave me the ick a
little bit because he's a Nazi and they gave him something to
(22:43):
feel sorry for him about. And I had some feelings about
it. I feel less strongly about it
now as the season has progressed.
But it's a choice, you know, to humanize him in that way.
Yeah, it's definitely a choice. As you say, as we go forward, I
think that his character developed and the way his
character art goes makes this this is really foundational for
(23:06):
his character that he is a Nazi.But I mean, people can be more
than one thing, right? So he is a Nazi, but
simultaneously, when you see thebackground scenes of him at
home, he's a really good dad. He obviously really loves his
son and his wife. And I think that like the
protagonist who occasionally do heinous shit, they're like,
(23:27):
well, you know what, here's thisNazi.
But we're also going to make this difficult for you as a
viewer, because people are not just one thing.
I do, I agree and I like it because it once again, and we've
talked about this before, it kind of shows us a danger that's
all around us. We can see someone be a really
(23:47):
good dad, but they could be verywell could be a Nazi without us
knowing. Doing good shit doesn't excuse
you from doing bad shit or the other way around.
I think they do a great job as the series goes on to have them
both be extremely evil and don'tat the same time in a different
situation. The other thing that I really
(24:09):
like is that the actor who playsFranz Farber is German.
I assume he speaks really good German.
And so when there are scenes that only have Nazis in them,
they speak German. But then when there's scenes
that have our team in them, we're supposed to understand
that they're multilingual. But I, I don't, I don't know if
(24:30):
the actors are or are not. I'm assuming they're not because
in scenes where like for example, the team will be
speaking to like French civilians.
So we're meant to understand they're speaking French.
They just speak English with a French accent, or similarly, if
they're meant to be speaking with German people, they'll just
speak English with a German accent.
And that really tickles me. It also tickled me that this
(24:50):
actor Germany actor plays France.
He's also quite good at English,so when he speaks English you
almost forget that he's German. For sure, yeah, he's the
multilingual one. Everyone else.
Oh no, to be fair, I feel like most of them have some lines in
German and some lines in French in this show and it's not bad.
(25:19):
So episode 4. Yeah, they're in Toulouse.
The team is back behind enemy lines, and this time they're
there to smuggle a British airmen out of France.
And the reason why this guy getsspecial treatment because
normally they wouldn't waste, you know, like 5 or 6 secret
agents on this is because he's the son of a rich politician.
Yes, I did not like this guy very much.
(25:42):
It's not his fault, but still, it made me feel like, what the
heck are they doing? It made me feel kind of like the
team in savoring Private Ryan, who's like, why do we have to go
and save one guy? It felt like that.
Yeah. So we also need lounge singer
Hallie Duvernay, played by KarenLeBlanc, and she's clearly a
(26:05):
take on Josephine Baker. She's very cool and she agrees
to help them to try and get thisguy out, but only if they get
her fellow magician out of Jailhurst.
Also, I think maybe her lover. It's kind of open the air a
little bit. Yeah, I think it's implied.
A little info about Josephine Baker.
She was an American vaudeville star.
She became hugely popular in France in the 1920s.
(26:28):
At the time, she may well have been the wealthiest black woman
alive. She fled Paris in 1940 as the
Germans advanced, and she had a Chateau in the South of France.
So she sheltered many refugees at her home and ultimately,
knowing where her sympathies lay, she was approached to join
the resistance. And she said France made me what
I am. I will be grateful forever.
(26:50):
The people of Paris have given me everything.
I am ready to give them my life.You can use me as you wish,
which is badass as hell. And so she used her ability to
move in certain social circles, to go to parties and go to
meetings and collect informationfrom high-ranking Nazis.
And she also had resistance since fighters at her home, she
supplied them with visas. And when eventually the Nazi
(27:14):
started to suspect her, she had to flee France.
And she brought with her a significant amount of secret
intelligence to London. And when she returned to France
after D-Day, she raised money toprovide food and coal for fellow
Parisians. So really cool lady.
She was awarded the Qua de Gaia and the Rosetta, that easy
stance. And Charles Segal also named her
(27:34):
a Chevadier de Le Jean Donaio, which is the highest Order of
Merit for military and civil action.
Very cool. And the character in this, it's
obvious that she's based on her,but also she's just brazen as
hell. Like she talks back to the
Germans and everything. It's so cool.
Like Alfred and Aurora are in there in her club and the
(27:55):
Nancy's kind of do a raid on theclub and she just talks back to
them like nobody's business. Yeah, for sure.
I think it's kind of a thing where it's like if you act like
you have nothing to hide and that you're not afraid, then,
you know, maybe a lot of the times if you just stand up for
yourself, other people will backdown, you know?
And this is also where Aurora and Alfred, I like to call them
(28:19):
Alfie. I don't think anyone calls them
Alfie, but I do. You can call them Alfie.
They're not romantic yet, but they have to pretend to be
lovers and that is kind of the start of their little romance
moments. It's not that or it's just very
like in the background a little.Yeah, it's the it's the fake
(28:39):
dating story. We all love to see it.
I love it, though it's quite They all get arrested and it
doesn't really end well for the phantom musician that's in the
jail. But we also get a little side
plot in this episode, and it's Harry.
I didn't really get this episodetoo much for Harry, but he helps
(28:59):
a pregnant woman who is wounded in the accidental bombing that
occurred when the Ritz catch blame went down.
And it's like this whole thing where he helps her give birth
and then he takes the baby to the nuns.
And I'm like. Yeah.
Isn't there a part where he's just like carrying the baby and
some Nazis come upon him and they're like, where'd you get
that baby? Yes, they're like in a Jeep or
(29:23):
something and they come up and they come upon him and then they
give him a lift to the Abbey, I think.
Like we'll help you bring that baby.
Episode 5, They're in Saint Antoine and they are working
(29:44):
with a Vichy French mayor in order to blow up a train that
supplies U boats. And the reason why she's agreed
to help them is because a whole bunch of local young women have
disappeared. They've been taken by the S S
and she says I'll help you, but you have to find out what
happened to all these local village girls.
This episode, man, this episode is really tough watch because
(30:04):
it's about SSR running an Aryan forced birthing center with the
women that are being taken by the s s.
And it's like in this castle andit's quite like idyllic place if
it weren't what it actually was.Like.
We don't know right at the beginning.
We don't really know what's going on, but it's gross, you
(30:25):
guys. It's really disgusting.
So they go there and of course for it and the good guy that he
is wants to free all the women, even though it's going to be a
hell of a thing to do. It's quite difficult.
So they decide to use a trade explosion as a destruction, but
it does not go 100% according toplan.
(30:47):
Yeah, so this is from the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Nazi authorities created the Leben's Form program to increase
Germany's population. Pregnant German women deemed
quote UN quote, racially valuable were encouraged to give
birth to their children at Stevens foreign homes.
So this would include like single mothers, people who they
were trying to cut down on the abortion rate from quote, UN
(31:09):
quote racially valuable people. And it was weird.
And during World War 2, the program became complicit in the
kidnapping of foreign children with physical features
considered Aryan by the Nazis. And as you can imagine, as the
German Empire spread, many of those impregnated by the s, s
and German soldiers and civilians were foreign women,
with their consent or not, whosechildren could be taken by the
(31:30):
Levensborne program if the womenwere thought to be racially
pure. And they kind of in this episode
show you illustrations of the perfect nose and the perfect
face shape and all that sort of stuff.
So it's really, it's like breeding, like actual breeding
programs for Aryan people. Yeah, it's pretty gross for
(31:53):
sure. Back and come back.
Sergeant Christina has been talking to the britches behind
Sinclair's back, but he kind of knows, and he keeps her where he
can keep an eye on her. Yeah, she is super ambitious.
You can tell she really wants toget in on field work and stuff,
and Sinclair keeps frustrating her efforts to do that.
So yeah, I. Feel like he's like he knows to
(32:16):
her about it even when he does confront her and that's it
later, right and like the British and the.
Canadians are on the same side, however, obviously each party's
involved. They're going to have their own
priorities and maybe their own kind of little sub things
they've got going on, right? Just a note from this episode,
they find a defective bomb at one point that's been sabotaged
(32:37):
by people who were forced to make it for the Nazis.
And there were stories of this really happening from The Fall
of Fortresses by Elmer Bendiner.There's a story in particular
about German bombs being taken to be disarmed and found to have
no explosive charge. And there was a note inside one
of them in check that said this is all we can do for you now.
The book I'm reading right now, the women who flew for Hitler
(32:58):
later on in the war as their test flying planes, they keep
finding that the planes have been intentionally sabotaged by
the French workers who were making them.
And so this did happen. I mean, that's what's going to
happen if you use slave labor, right?
The people who are making stuff for you are going to go out of
their way to fuck it up. Yeah.
And the show does this quite. A lot where, like you said,
there are some actual little background things that aren't
(33:21):
that relevant to the plot, but they're giving you a sense of
what's going on in the real. I don't think any of the
missions are real, as far as we know anyway.
Some other are based on things that.
Happen in real life or scenarios, but when I was at
Juno Beach in 2019, where the Canadians landed at D-Day, there
are these German bunkers you cango in and visit.
(33:42):
And the German bunkers were built by French slave labor.
And what they've done is they'vesanded away the covering that
was put on the walls inside. And what you can see is that the
French, instead of putting the cinder blocks upright where
they're structurally sound, theywould put them on their side.
And of course that makes the bunker much more likely to
collapse if it gets hit by a bomb or something.
(34:02):
And so even then, right under the Nazis noses, people were
trying to sabotage them. There are small acts of.
Resistance on my mind? Absolutely, yeah.
Episode 6 During Mahman, Harry is seriously wounded during a
(34:25):
factory sabotage mission that's gone awry.
They have captured a German radio operator to try and get
them Intel that will allow them to escape the town because
they're kind of surrounded and they have to decide whether to
trust him. I love this episode.
This episode is probably my favorite end of the season.
It's so good. You get the feeling that this
(34:45):
radio operator is sort of like acurrent.
I think he's an officer, but he doesn't feel like that.
He feels like just a guy doing ajob.
And that's one of the conflicts in this episode because Neil has
to keep an eye on him and like he ties him up and he talks to
him and he gets to know him a little bit.
(35:06):
But then as the episode progresses, they decide that
they have to kill him. And Neil is the one who gets to
do that. He assumes, and they all do,
that this German has betrayed them.
But after Neil's killed him, some that took him quite a
little bit of time and effort todo because he didn't really want
(35:27):
to do it, They found out that this German has not in fact
betrayed them and he was going to crossover and join their
side. But they killed him.
So now Neil gets to live for this forever.
This is one of the things I love.
About this show is that this character who's such a bruiser
that I think if you were to see him in a traditional action
(35:47):
movie, he'd be the type who would just shoot a guy and walk
away. Cool as a But in this show
they've made it that even killing an enemy has a cost.
And it's something that especially once he finds out
that this guy did not in fact betray them, it really weighs
heavily on him, even though he'ssupposed to be this kind of hard
(36:07):
ass character. And I really liked that it
follows him all the way into. Far into season 2.
I can't speak for season 3 because I've not seen it yet.
The whole show does this thing where killing is never easy.
Everything. One of them struggles with
killing and you can see them hesitate and doubt and it's
(36:27):
always a choice. It's never just like a point
blank reaction or it's like a last resort.
Like they don't make it easier. Very many American movies make
killing look like this heroic but easy thing to do, and this
show does not at all. You can feel it.
It's quite heavy, absolutely. A young medic named Siobhan,
(36:50):
played by Emily Taffa is broughtin to help Harry and he takes a
shine to her, but unfortunately she turns out to be a Nazi
informer. No want.
Want also, Harry's given a lot of morphine, so he does quite a
bit of talking to this nurse. If I think she shouldn't be
talking about to this nurse. Yeah, he does really like her.
(37:13):
He does really like her. Like, I don't think he's
kidding. No, it sure comes.
Back to bite him in the ass as this episode was happening.
I knew it already because I thought she was quite eager to
help. She was brought in by, I think,
a guy who's high story. They're in a safe household and
I thought she would be like if this were an actual just
(37:36):
civilian that lived there or a nurse that lived there.
She seemed not reluctant enough to me, but I wasn't sure.
So when it when the end game, I was still a little bit
surprised. Like in a lot of shows where?
You get this mission of the weekformat, There are throwaway
characters, and this show doesn't really do that.
It's like you might get a character for more than one
(37:56):
episode or whatever, but at no time is anyone 100% in the clear
from getting killed or turning out to be a bad guy or whatever.
You know? I thought Siobhan, her
motivations. Are quite interesting because it
goes back to Ireland and not wanting English to be in Ireland
(38:17):
and she wants them to get out ofIreland and so the Germans have
promised her. Maybe she's a little naive.
They've told her look after we're done in Europe we'll come
over to Ireland and kick the English out for them.
Well, I mean, and there was. This is, you know, based on
historical fact. There was some support in
Ireland for the fascist cause, primarily because they were
(38:39):
fighting against the English. Exactly.
It's not in a form. Ground.
But if you wanted, you could go look up this little bit of
history again. So that's quite nice.
Episode 7. This is the first part of a
(39:00):
two-part episode, so the second last and the last episode of
this season. In Paris, the group is tasked
with assassinating French collaborators.
As you can imagine, they're a little bit hesitant about doing
this because they basically get a list of names from Sinclair's
British superior, Lieutenant Colonel George Mayhew, played by
Adrian Lucas. And something just seems off.
(39:23):
It's like they're being asked togo and assassinate a bunch of
civilians who may or may not have worked with the Nazi, and
it just feels kind of dicey to them.
Yeah, because there's there's. No proof.
They just have to believe what'son the paper.
Like they have to look at this photo and be like, OK, I'm just
going to go kill this guy. Which is again, goes back to the
the way the show makes killing has a lot of weight.
(39:45):
They don't do this easily. The one who struggles the most
is new because he sits in this guy's room.
He's waiting for this guy to return to his house.
And he sits there for a long time and he sees like a picture,
I think of his kid staring at him.
And he turns it around and he puts his gun down.
And you think, you almost think he's going to get out of there.
(40:08):
He's not going to go and do it. So when when the time comes for
him to actually shoot this person, he doesn't because he
doesn't get. The choice because they end up
like grappling on the floor and he gets his ass handed to him a
little bit first. It's a very violent.
Physical fight. So Aurora.
Like, each of them has their ownperson to kill, and Aurora is
(40:31):
tasked with killing someone who turns out to be someone she
knows from before. Yeah, and.
Tom, when he finds his target, she's providing medical care to
a man named Drabik, played by Craig Parkinson.
And he at first is a little bit like, like kind of leery because
(40:51):
he's, you know, seeing this woman being helpful.
And he finds out that Drabik is trying to get Intel to the
Allies about the concentration camp.
And then and the woman that Tom's supposed to kill ends up
selling them out to the Gestapo.So turns out she was a
collaborator, but Tom manages tokill her and get Drabik to
safety. And Drabik not a real person
(41:11):
necessarily, but this is the first time that the
concentration camps are really coming up.
And it's difficult to say precisely in real life, when the
Allies quote, UN quote, knew about the Holocaust, Of course,
the word Holocaust wasn't used until much later.
They did not really have the, I guess, verbiage for this kind of
thing that we have now. But the Allied governments
(41:33):
released a statement about it inDecember of 1942, condemning
what the Germans were doing. But it's clear that reports were
coming in for many months beforethat.
And a central figure in blowing the whistle is Gerhard Wigner,
who was a German Jew who heard from extensive business contacts
in the summer of 1942 that the Germans were planning on using
the pesticides Zyklon B to exterminate Jews on mass.
(41:55):
And he tried to get this information to American and
British decision makers, but intelligent intermediaries were
really skeptical until more reports started coming out and
it became kind of unavoidable. You would be that, wouldn't you?
Because it's such a unbelievablething.
Like you, you don't want to believe that humans can do that
to other human beings. Yeah, for sure.
(42:18):
So our. Nazi friend.
I say friend, but he's not our friend.
Faber has other problems besidestrucking the team down because
he has a little sidekick called Victor Forst, played by Julian M
Deyster. And he has thinking he's helping
him, quote, UN quote, reported his disabled son, which will
(42:41):
mean reporting means that he will get picked up by a bus and
taken somewhere, I'm guessing some kind of camp.
And he will not be long for thisworld.
Yeah, it's. Man, it's tough because as soon
as father learns that his son has been reported, he already
knows that his son is going to be killed.
(43:02):
And my guy, the cognitive dissonance of working your ass
off for this regime that you already know would kill your son
if they knew, and that's why youwere hiding him.
And so he's obviously so upset when he finds out that his son
has been reported. But you're also kind of like,
dude, nobody asked you to work for the Nazis.
(43:23):
Like this is a career choice that you made and also his.
Wife. He's got no clue.
Oh yeah, she has no idea. She's in this happy little
mindset where she's like, oh, they're going to pick up our son
on a bus and take him to a nice summer camp where he gets to
hang out with other disabled kids.
Like literally zero clue. I wonder though it.
Feels super naive to me. It feels like one of those
(43:46):
German people are just pretendednot to know.
I don't think she knows, but it's like, how can you not know?
Well, it's it's one of those things.
Where, you know, you're you're living your happy little nice,
pleasant upper middle class lifeand you don't want to rock the
boat or make waves. And honestly, I think it's one
of those things where even if you kind of know the borderline
(44:09):
of what's happening, maybe the rough shape of it, I don't think
in your wildest imagination you would imagine like the
infrastructure of the Holocaust.So I think obviously it's silly
and she's completely naive. But I do think there were
probably people who were like, Oh yeah, like the Jews are
getting picked up and we never see them again.
And then they just don't think about it any further than that,
(44:31):
which is not excuse for anythingthat happened.
But I mean, you and I know people who don't read the news
now. I used to be one of us.
Yeah, we're out there. It's like sticking your head in.
The sand because it's the most convenient and then you
genuinely do not know what's going on well and even you know.
Even after Kristallnacht, you had garbles out here being like,
(44:54):
we didn't touch a hair on a single Jew's head, and why would
you be reporting that terrible propaganda?
So the government was denying that all this was happening.
And if you're someone who is enjoying your little life and
you don't want to think too much, you're going to be like,
OK, I'll trust the government. Yeah.
Yeah. Also, I mean, Faber's wife,
she's interesting character. We'll meet her a little more in
Season 2, but obviously someone who's lived at an extremely
(45:16):
privileged life, she's very sheltered.
So yes, yes, yes, yes, by the way.
What did you think of first? I hate First.
He's pretending to be his friend, but he's also furthering
his his own career. Oh yeah, He's like, oh, I.
Guess what, I did you a huge favor.
I reported your disabled son andit's just like OK, thank you I
(45:39):
guess. Yeah he sucks but luckily he go
and get his comeuppance. Right.
So Episode 8, the season finale.As the team try to reach their
(46:00):
rendezvous point in the catacombs, they realize that a
massive roundup of Jews is underway.
And, of course, they have just learned about the extent of what
is happening to these Jews who get rounded up and deported.
And so they're determined that they're going to smuggle out
Drabak, the Holocaust witness, so that he can get this
information and sound the alarm to the world.
Yeah, this episode was good. I really enjoyed this as a Susan
(46:24):
finale. It's quite good.
So we get a couple little different pairs of characters in
this episode again, so many makecoffees of a pamphlet to try and
get the message out to people tofight back.
And it's actually Tom's Ed man skills that make him.
He makes like this really prettypoem that they put on on a
(46:45):
pamphlet, which I quite liked. But then Tommy shot trying to
help him juice as capture and you're like, Oh no, what's going
to happen to Tom? We don't know literally because
this show. Will literally kill a main
character. They don't give a shit.
Yvonne, who has returned to lurethe team and do a trap, has a
(47:06):
crisis of conscience and she reveals that she was a double
agent because she learns the true nature of what the Germans
are doing. Like she also was in the dark
about the concentration camps and all that stuff.
And so when she finds out, she reveals to the team that she was
a double agent the whole time. And she's like, look, when Harry
was high, he told me a bunch of shit and I told it all of the
(47:26):
Germans. So now the Germans know all
about Alfred, unfortunately, in his photographic memory, and
they're going to be tracking himdown.
And obviously Harry feels prettyterrible about this.
He does because he did. Really like her now he feels
really guilty that he said all this stuff about his team to
this girl who is just also when Aurora finds her and she's
(47:51):
trying to, I don't know, take a bunch of painkillers.
That scene is brutal. Or it's like, you don't get to
die, you're coming with me. Oh yeah, I totally forgot about.
That actually now that the Nazisknow about.
You just know that he's got all this valuable information in his
head, right? So they have to go and get him.
Guess what they do? They capture him.
(48:13):
Aurora is supposed to shoot him because he's got all the secrets
of all the operations and all that, and she's supposed to
shoot him. But she looks at him as they
hold him, and she can't do it. She shakes her head at him and
he looks at her. Remember this sad eyes.
This guys got such sad ass. He does, and I really.
(48:33):
Liked this because we're going to find out later when Aurora is
asked to make another super tough choice about killing
someone. She does it, she follows through
with it. And so the fact that she doesn't
kill Alfred when Sinclair has told her that at all costs, we
do not let Alfred get captured because he has all this
information and he can basicallydestroy our entire network in
(48:56):
France. Even though she knows how
important it is, she can't do it.
So this is a huge, huge character moment for her.
I made a joke. About the actor who plays Alfred
when I when I was watching this,not this episode specifically
but this face. This man falls.
He just looks like unhappy all the time and tense all the time.
He's just working meme. He does to be fair I think.
(49:18):
He is probably tense and I'm still not happy all the time.
And right after we see Aurora have this intense moment where
we realized the strength of her feelings for Alfred, we find out
that Renee is still alive and he's been captured by the
Germans who planted false evidence about his death and
they've been holding him the whole time.
And funny detail about this. Alfred knew about this.
(49:42):
He didn't tell anyone, but he figured it out.
Yeah, he sort of looked at. The fabrication that the Germans
had done and was like, this doesn't make any sense.
Like he's probably still alive, but he didn't have, like, proof.
Proof, I guess, in another shocking moment.
No one has asked for in this episode, Franz Faber, as a sign
of mercy, kills his own son before he gets taken away by the
(50:06):
Nazis. Yeah, it's.
Oh my God, y'all. He's crying.
The son doesn't understand what's happening.
Like and the, the Sabina Franz'swife is outside the door and
she's also crying and it's absolutely gutting.
And I actually, part of me was like, surely because they kind
(50:26):
of cut away so you don't actually watch a child get
smothered to death. And part of me was like, maybe
he chickens out at the last second and like, actually his
son gets smuggled to safety. Like I thought that was a
genuine possibility. I wasn't sure if the show was
going to go there. And then it definitely did.
And I was like, Oh my God, man, it's so fucking rough.
Yeah. And I'm like.
(50:47):
I don't want to feel sympathy for this man.
I don't need him to be on our side.
I'm fine with him being evil. Don't make me feel stuff for
him. But you do.
You feel for him as a father. I think you're meant to feel for
him as a father and as a human being.
Yeah. It's killer writing for.
Sure, and we also get right at the end our first D Up mention.
(51:11):
The D Up raid is going to be a major factor in the plot in
coming seasons. So right now we're July 1942 and
and the D Up raid took place on the 19th of August.
So it's coming up we're going totell you more about the.
D Upra in the next episode. Yes, we absolutely are.
(51:37):
I have a just a couple notes about.
Camp XI Read this book called Inside Camp X by Lynn Philip
Hodgson and the camp itself opened December 6th, 1941.
And the reason why this state isrelevant is because just just
before Pearl Harbor and the Americans entering the war and
when it was built, it was between Whitby and Oshawa on the
(51:58):
shores of Lake Ontario. It was a collaborative effort
between the British Security Coordination and the Canadian
government, and part of its initial purpose was to link
Britain and the US when the US was still officially neutral.
So it's kind of a little sneaky,sneaky backdoor.
Here's how we can communicate without anybody knowing.
The area today is known as Intrepid Park, and the reason
why it's called that is it's named after the wartime
(52:19):
intelligence code name for the BSCS director, Canadian soldier
and spymaster Sir William Stevenson, who was famously an
inspiration for James Bond. Ian Fleming himself once wrote
James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true
spy. The real thing is William
Stevenson. So cool, right?
Again, I'll just say again. And again and again.
(52:39):
This is such a cool show and I wish more people knew about it.
So I'm so glad we're doing this episode.
Me too. And.
I'm beyond excited to explore more as the seasons progress
because I just feel like it keeps getting better.
Like I almost want to say Season3 is my favorite season, but I'm
like maybe I was just more invested by then, you know?
Yeah, I don't know. I'm.
(53:00):
Nearly at the end of Season 2 right now, so I'm slightly
behind, but I will be caught up by the time we do more
recording. We are going to rate this show,
but we're going. To wait until until we get all
the way to the end because it's hard to read.
Seasons each on their own. Yeah, for sure.
(53:25):
Are you reading anything? I am reading something I.
Am reading unauthorized action Mountbatten and the D up raid by
Brian Loring Villa. I just started it last night and
oh boy, I haven't read a book bya real historian in a while.
And I don't mean that in the sense that like journalists and
other people who write history oriented books are not quote UN
(53:46):
quote real historians, but I just mean like this guy actually
is a historian. He studied history, and so the
first part of the book is him being like, here's good other
historians have said about Diab.I'm gonna tell you why they're
wrong. So I'm really looking forward to
reading the next event. That sounds great.
Yeah. I'm also reading another book.
I've been keeping up on my reading guys.
(54:08):
I am reading The Spy Who Loved by Claire Molly after finishing
Agents Are by Claire Molly, and if this is telling you anything,
someone's reading The Woman Who Flew for Hitler, also by Claire
Molly. We might have a Claire Molly
related episode coming up for you soon.
Yeah, y'all should check out her.
Books if you haven't, but even if you haven't, I'm sure you're
(54:30):
going to enjoy the episode Yes, that's all for.
Today, folks, thank you so much for listening.
You can find us wherever you getyour podcasts on Apple, on
Spotify, on Amazon, wherever thefuck you want.
You can send an episode to your friends.
You should definitely send this episode to your friend so more
people get to know about X Company.
And you can follow us on Instagram at Rosie Reviewer
(54:53):
Podcast or visit ourwebsite@rosiereviewer.com.
I've recently been posting some related articles in there if
you're interested. And rate US five stars once
you're there, I don't care. Yes, we do care.
Rate US 5. Stars also y'all definitely
check out the website because Mart is underselling it.
(55:14):
Everything that she posts on there is really good and you
should go check it out. Thank you.
See you next week. Bye.
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm.
And we like World War 2 media, and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the reviewer.
This week we are talking about the first season of the TV show
X Company, which came out in 2015.
(00:22):
It was created by Mark Ellis andStephanie Morgenstern, and it
ran for three seasons on the CBC.
It follows 5 fictional recruits at Camp XA Real training camp
for covert agents during World War 2 on the North Shore of Lake
Ontario in Canada. We're going to cover each season
in its own episode. So what did you think of the
first season of X Company? I wish I'd known the show
(00:44):
existed before we started duringthis podcast, just because it's
so good. I really enjoyed this show.
And Speaking of, I want to thankRobin Bowers or Robin Bowers.
I don't know if you pronounce your name in Dutch or in
English, but she recommended theshow to us being Canadian and
Dutch, which is quite cool sincewe are Canadian and Dutch and I
(01:05):
don't know when I started watching after doing some
sleuthing to try and find a way to watch it.
I didn't really get into it for the first two episode and then
for some reason I was hooked andnow I just want there to be more
of it than there is. I really liked it.
I was really surprised that it'squite heavy, it features some
(01:28):
quite dark stuff and they don't really shy away from it.
And for some reason I was ready to compare this to a CW show,
Which it's quite superficial usually, but this show is not.
And I don't know about the CBC. You can probably tell me is it
usually this dark? No, I was not expecting this.
(01:48):
I'll be honest, I really thoughtwe were going to get more of a
lighter tone for this when I watched it.
Come facts. It's basically the SRE of
Canada. I would say.
It feels like that to me. Would that be what it is?
Well, actually a lot of SOE agents trained at Camp XA, sort
of training camp for SOE agents,and they also recruited Canadian
(02:10):
locals and they also trained trainers who went on to train
people at the OSS, which is the predecessor of the CIA.
So they had a few different things going on.
It's one of those things that I've never heard of before.
So the more you know once you dothis broadcast, how about you?
I mean, like I said, I was not sure what to expect going into
this. CBC in the past few years has
(02:33):
had, I would say, more misses than hits, unfortunately.
But the CBC is known for Schitt's Creek, which was
obviously quite a famous comedy a few years ago.
And yeah, I don't know, I was expecting sort of more of that
vibe a little bit maybe a sort of Avenger's esque found family
situation or maybe like you weresaying this a little bit slick
and sexy sort of CW group ensemble situation.
(02:55):
But it's not really like that. I mean, I find that you can tell
there is quite a lot of historical research done.
Even the little bits and pieces in the background are correct.
And the characters all have their own individual character
arcs. I find it's pretty well written
in that way. It's like you said, it's dark in
places. They really don't pull any
(03:15):
punches. It can be quite startlingly
violent. And the characters are a little
morally nuanced. I mean, they are are
protagonists and they are the quote UN quote heroes of the
show, but they also do things that are reprehended sometimes
and I really enjoyed it. I think it's a really good
watch. If you haven't ever heard of X
Company before, and I don't blame you.
(03:36):
It's not a super famous show, but you should try and find
somewhere where you can watch itbecause it's quite good.
It does have, Speaking of Schitt's Creek, it does have
Dustin Milligan who was in Schitt's Creek in it.
So there is that. I always want to say this show
kind of deserves a little bit ofa content warning thinking about
it, because there's a lot of blood, there's some assault,
(03:56):
there's a lot of violence. So if you're sensitive to that,
be aware that they show it all on this TV show.
It's not not very censored at all.
I think that's good, but some people might find it slightly
startling. Yeah, no, absolutely.
So let's get into the show. Episode 1 of Season 1 starts in
(04:25):
France in 1942 in a village called Via Mari.
We meet the team, starting with Britt New McKay, played by
Warren Brown. He's our favorite.
He's an explosive expert. And we also meet radio operator
Harry James, played by Connor Price, American Ed man John
Cummings, played by Dustin Milligan.
And we meet second in command Aurora left, played by Evelyn
(04:48):
Boroschi. She is German and French
Canadian and they are led by thehandsome leading man and also
Aurora's love interest in the Navy lead by Francois Arnold.
Yeah, we lead off, we get right into the action.
The first episode's pretty action-packed and you get a
(05:09):
little bit of a sense of the format of the show, so it's kind
of a mission of the week type thing, but there's also an
overarching plot that's taking place in the background.
I was just going to say they do this pretty much every time.
We're just dropped right into the mission.
There's not very often much of Alead up to anything.
They just, there's another mission and they're on it
(05:29):
already. So I thought that's quite
interesting. You never get like, I wonder
what our next mission is going to be now.
We're already in the middle of it, so it's quite nice.
Yeah, I quite like that show don't tell aspect.
You know, it's not like boring briefings and stuff like that.
I like that. The makeup of the team they
have. I mean, Aurora is German, but
she's also French Canadian and obviously we have an American on
(05:50):
the team and a Brit on the team.And Camp X was kind of like
that. I had people from all over
famous alumni like Roald Dahl and Paul Den who wrote
Goldfinger and Murder on the Orient Express would train at
Camp X. There's also some anecdotal
stories about Ian Fleming maybe training there, but we don't
know for sure if that's true. But you know, it's kind of fun
(06:10):
as a little a little intrigue. But it was perhaps most useful
because it's location permitted the hiring of Hungarian,
Yugoslavian, Russian, French, Italian, Japanese and other
foreign language speaking nationals from multicultural
centers like Toronto and Montreal who could be dropped
into occupied countries to foment resistance and help out
people on the ground there. I don't understand how I'd never
(06:33):
heard of this before. Like why did you unknown?
I think that after World War 2 they destroyed a lot of the
records. The physical location was put to
a different use and a lot of thepeople who worked there and went
through the camp were smart to secrecy.
So similarly to the SOEA, lot ofthem just kept their mouth shuts
(06:54):
and took it to the grave with them.
I. Think it's kind of sad that you
are so close to it. Yeah, there's nothing left of
it. I'm like why?
I know it's super unfortunate, but I think on the website I've
seen that they have like a little tour of the area or
something. I think that would be neat to
check out. Definitely recruit someone and
turn them into a World War 2 aficionado and take them with
(07:17):
you. Yeah, the group of them, their
arrival in the village has resulted in a resistance fighter
getting caught by the Nazis, andthey must race against time to
blow up a bridge, killing the local Nazis before they can
retaliate against the local population for helping the
resistance. So this is the kind of high
stakes stuff that they're getting up to every episode.
(07:38):
I've already forgotten whether this thing I'm about to say is
in this show. I think it is.
Doesn't it start with a little kid being held at gunpoint and
being told if you stop saluting I'll shoot you?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's this episode.
No, you're right. Do you tell the story?
(07:59):
Because it's very indicative of what kind of show this is.
You know, in some shows they like go easy on the kids, right?
They're like, we cannot do this to your child and we cannot try
this on TV. But there's a child and I think
she's painted some resistant symbol onto the laundry or
something and she gets caught and and now she kind of appears
(08:22):
and tells her, well, now we can make an example of you.
We've got to. We've got to punish you.
And she has to. And the Nazi salute, I believe,
if I remember correctly, and theNazi tells her, if you stop
saluting, I will shoot you or the other guy will shoot you
because I'm not a Nazi. And he ends up showing her
mercy. But you're like, this is how the
(08:44):
show opens. It's so tense.
Yeah, super brutal. And you're like, OK, I see.
So we're not even, not even the kids get off Scott free on this
show. And this is not a 16 year old.
This is like a 7 year old. This is a very small child.
Absolutely. But I mean, I guess if nothing
(09:04):
else, indicative of the true brutality and ruthlessness of
the Nazis right off the bat. Yeah, it's very true.
And I thought that this Nazi that showed her mercy, I thought
he was going to be a main character.
But I think that I've had a lot of characters in this show and
they don't stick around for reallife.
Yeah, they come and go, and there are as well.
(09:25):
I mean, obviously all the main characters are fictional, but
sometimes in the background, every now and again, there will
be a real figure from history, you know?
We get a nice little animated transition and we move back to
Camp XI. Want to say this is the only
part where you can kind of see it's low budget.
It's the animation in this, it'skind of wonky, but anyway, it's
(09:46):
a nice way to kind of show you you're moving from France back
to Canada. So back at Camp X in Ontario, we
meet Duncan Sinclair, which is the leader of leaders, played by
Hugh Dillon. He's the CEO and he's trying to
recruit Alfred Graves, played byJack Lasky, with a nervous young
man with synesthesia and a photographic memory.
(10:08):
As you can imagine, if you're a secret agent, it would be quite
useful to have these skills. We also need Sergeant Christina
Breeland, played by Lara Jean Jarastati, and she's the team's
behind the scenes layers on at the home base.
She's cool. I like her.
I love Christina, she's one of my favorite characters and she
(10:28):
also turns out to be kind of a hard ass later on.
I feel like they all are. I have to say, at this base
there's quite a few women that seem to be holding on the Fort.
Yeah, for sure. They're doing a lot of the radio
operator stuff and the encrypting and decrypting and
all that. Besides being a training
facility for secret agents, CampX was also a centralized radio
(10:53):
and telecommunications center. It was called Hydra, and you see
it in the show. It's this big transmitter and it
was designed to transmit messages between the United
States, Canada, Great Britain, South America.
It could transmit messages all over the world.
And many parts for Hydra were scavenged secondhand.
And many of the radio operators who ended up working at Camp X
were actually recruited from amongst amateurs who were known
(11:16):
in hobby circles for being particularly gifted
transmitters. And obviously we see some women
doing that work in the show. And the transmissions were
encrypted by the Rock X cipher machine, which was designed by
another Canadian and engineer named Benjamin Deforest Bailey.
And so I thought it was really cool that in the show they stuck
to that true history and we got to see all that stuff happening
(11:37):
in the background. It's funny because I read the
word hydride, not really picked up on it on the show and all I
can think about is Captain America.
Yeah, but this hydra is a good one.
So the name of the CEO is DuncanSinclair.
I think Sinclair is a nod to Sinclair House, which was an old
farmhouse that was on the Camp Xproperty already when it was
(11:57):
purchased by the government. Very cool.
I really like this CR character.He's a tough guy, but he's also
quite soft so I like that little.
He's like the dad of the group. He really is.
He's like the dad who's tough but fair on the group, but he
also makes some pretty wild decisions throughout the course
of the show. Yes, he does.
And just a little explanation for those of you who would like
(12:21):
to know a little bit more about Alfred and his condition
synesthesia. When you have synesthesia, your
brain roots sensory information through multiple unrelated
sentences causing you to experience more than one sense
simultaneously. So some people I know kind of
attribute colors to numbers or weekdays or something like that.
(12:44):
And I feel like with Alfred, he kind of gets everything all at
once so he can taste words and he can see lots of colors and
shapes and all that. So it's very neat, but also I
feel like it's totally made-up for the show.
Yeah, I mean, it does factor into this romantic plot line he
has with Aurora later where he doesn't want to say her name
(13:06):
because it has all these relations to other things in his
head. And then he does say her name
and it's the whole thing. I do like the way they use his
ability to also have an experienced trauma in different
ways and work at you later. But there's some torture, money
has to kill someone, something happens and it's all related to
(13:28):
my senses and I quite like the way they used it.
Yeah, I like that too. Well, and to wrap up the first
episode, Renee, our fearless team leader, is shot and
presumed dead. Oh no, I mean I feel like we
barely even got to know him. Yeah.
Farewell, Renee. We hardly knew.
Yes. He's only there to look pretty,
(13:48):
really. Yeah, Well, I feel like in this
episode, too, we get to see, like, it's Harry who kind of
fucks up the explosive device asthe Nazis are coming and he's
trying to fix it. And Renee is like, you know,
like, blow the bridge, blow the bridge.
And it's this whole thing where it's like, very tense.
But we get to see some of the characters be kind of new and
(14:09):
inexperienced at their job. And then as the show goes on,
they progress and they get better.
In some cases they get like harder personality wise.
And so I enjoyed that aspect too.
If we look at the this crew, if we talk about Harry for a
second, because he's kind of thebaby of the group, they keep
saying he's a Ted. He doesn't look like a Ted.
(14:30):
I feel like he's in his trances,but everybody else thinks he's
not up for the job. But he is up to a point, I
guess. I don't know who my favorite
character was after this first episode, but I think it's Neil.
I just think it's still Neil even after two seasons.
Well. Acceptable.
(14:51):
I also like Neil. So as you can tell, we're not
really spoiling the entire episode for you.
I mean, we're spoiling some bits, but you can definitely go
and watch it because these episodes are 45 minutes long, so
they're quite good. Yeah, it's a proper thriller
drama situation. So episode 2.
(15:18):
They've recruited Alfred at thispoint and he's reluctantly
joined the team for a mission tocharter.
I can't pronounce this either. Which is also France to steal
German coast that will allow theAllies to predict German bombing
rates. Pretty cool, but he has a bit of
a shaky start. But he acquits himself pretty
well and well enough to be invited to be a permanent member
(15:40):
of the team, so there's that. Aurora has ascended to team
leader, which, I mean, she was asecond in command before, so it
makes sense. But it's nice that her skills
are valued enough by other members of the team that they're
not. Like, would we have a girl
leading us, you know? No, they trust her.
She's kind of to them. She's the glue of that group.
(16:02):
Yeah, I mention it in some episodes as well, where it
doesn't really work without her.So I quite like that she gets to
be that central piece in a group.
I also like how real she is to be team leader because the
reason she's my team leader is because Renee's dead and she's
upset about this. I feel like Christian, I
reiterate. She loves him very much and he's
(16:24):
dead and she's like very upset about it.
Yeah, for sure. And I like that they made it
that she was reluctant to be team leader for that reason and
not because she didn't think shewas up to the job or not because
she wasn't tough enough. Because listen, this lady's
pretty fucking ruthless. The next thing I have so is that
(16:44):
they encounter some suspicious locals who are this family, the
husband, the wife and the kid. And the husband works for the
Vichy regime. And so the team is worried that
these people are gonna rat them out.
And Aurora is like, oh, I'll shoot them next.
She literally is like, she doesn't care.
She's like, we got to do our mission.
Sorry that these people got in the way, I guess.
(17:06):
And then we get to also learn a little bit more about Tom, our
American advertising man, because he's like, well, how
would you let me talk to them? And I'll try and talk them
around. And he ends up manipulating them
by lying to them. The wife believes that her
husband was killed in an Allied bombing raid.
And he's like, actually, what you don't know is that the
Germans sabotage that factory toturn the French populace against
(17:28):
the Allies. And afterwards someone's like,
oh, is that true? He's like, no, 100% just made
that up to manipulate them. But we get to see, you know,
that sort of aspect of his personality.
But also that Aurora was the onewho was like, I don't care.
This is time consuming. I'm leaving you figure this out
or shoot them. I don't care.
The show does a great job makingthem face tough decisions
(17:52):
without giving them an out. There are real problems and they
always have to solve them and there's no way out for them.
I think that's a desperate, goodrider that's not lazy in that
ride. And this episode's good too,
because it really sets up one ofthe team's overall objectives is
to build resistance on the ground in occupied countries.
So this is kind of the first time we see them starting to
(18:13):
work with the locals and that kind of stuff.
Episode 3 The team goes to Poitier, still in France, to
rescue a physicist with important weapons research who's
been kidnapped by the Nazis. With Thomas for backup, Aurora
(18:34):
and Tom seem to be this kind of team very often in the show.
They do little cons together with Aurora doing most of the
conning and Tom being there mostly for backup.
Aurora goes and seduces a Nazi career to steal the scientist
research, but then she goes off playbook and kills it's a
high-ranking Gustavo officer known as the Bleeder by kind of
(18:59):
seducing him and then he almost assaults her and then she's
like, wait a second, I'm not going to let this happen to me.
Fuck you now you're going to die.
This episode just completely threw me.
I was not expecting this to happen at all.
There's also a little mention ofa gay natty in it that obviously
(19:21):
the Nazis didn't like old peoplevery much.
So this natty, he's hiding his gayness.
And Aurora kind of helps, helps him a little even though he's a
Nazi. But she doesn't help other
Gustafa, known as the Bleeder because he he's a nasty piece of
shit. And I really like the way she
answers. Yeah, well, even because they
(19:42):
had sort of discussed earlier onthat he might be present and
they all agreed they were like, we're not going to kill him.
He's he's too high value as a Nazi.
Like if we do that, we're kind of going to blow our cover and
then Aurora ended up killing himanywhere.
I suddenly had a realization, but it's something to do with
season 2, so I won't talk about it yet.
(20:03):
But just so you know, just I'm just referencing this now that
something they say in this episode about him being a
high-ranking guy. And that having consequences.
Welcome back in in Season 2. Yeah, for sure.
And I like what you said about Aurora and Tom frequently
working together because they'rethe more, I think, polished face
(20:25):
of the team. They seem to be a little bit
more able to talk their way in and out of situations.
They're better at undercover work, whereas Neil's a bit more
of the bruiser type. He's kind of the one who gets
things done in the background. Obviously Harry has the
technical knowledge. He's the radio operator and that
kind of stuff, and they're kind of starting to figure out how to
(20:47):
fit Alfred into the team, too. I didn't really like Tom at the
beginning of the season, I thought he was quite like smooth
and also not that useful. But I, I, I've changed my mind
by now. So sorry John, I like you now.
Well, Harry, Neal and Alfred managed to extract the physicist
and Alfred makes his first kill,which as you discussed before,
(21:10):
is a pretty big deal for him. I like what they do because
Alfred has been training with Neil on how to kill people and
how to disarm them and then shoot them.
And as he kills this German thathe has to kill, he flashes back
to the training with Neil and I quite like how to do that and
show it. They do clever little things
(21:33):
visually as well. For something being a low budget
show, they kind of mask it by having really cool storytelling
tricks, which makes you forget that it's a low budget show.
Yeah, I would say you don't often notice that it's low
budget. It was not something that I
really thought much about and in.
This episode we also need our big time Casabelle guy, France
(21:56):
Faber, played by Turban Librecht, who is kind of our
seasons Betty and you will end up trying to chase the team
down, but he has a secret because he's hiding a disabled
son, which in case you don't know something else, the Nazis
did not look favorable upon. No, definitely.
We see that he is literally hiding his son from other Nazis
(22:20):
because his son has Down syndrome.
So he's visually you can tell that he's disabled.
And so the other Nazis have never even seen his son.
He's just keeping him completelyunder wraps.
His son's name is Uli. I, I'd like to early, but I have
to say when, when I saw this scene, it gave me the ick a
little bit because he's a Nazi and they gave him something to
(22:43):
feel sorry for him about. And I had some feelings about
it. I feel less strongly about it
now as the season has progressed.
But it's a choice, you know, to humanize him in that way.
Yeah, it's definitely a choice. As you say, as we go forward, I
think that his character developed and the way his
character art goes makes this this is really foundational for
(23:06):
his character that he is a Nazi.But I mean, people can be more
than one thing, right? So he is a Nazi, but
simultaneously, when you see thebackground scenes of him at
home, he's a really good dad. He obviously really loves his
son and his wife. And I think that like the
protagonist who occasionally do heinous shit, they're like,
(23:27):
well, you know what, here's thisNazi.
But we're also going to make this difficult for you as a
viewer, because people are not just one thing.
I do, I agree and I like it because it once again, and we've
talked about this before, it kind of shows us a danger that's
all around us. We can see someone be a really
(23:47):
good dad, but they could be verywell could be a Nazi without us
knowing. Doing good shit doesn't excuse
you from doing bad shit or the other way around.
I think they do a great job as the series goes on to have them
both be extremely evil and don'tat the same time in a different
situation. The other thing that I really
(24:09):
like is that the actor who playsFranz Farber is German.
I assume he speaks really good German.
And so when there are scenes that only have Nazis in them,
they speak German. But then when there's scenes
that have our team in them, we're supposed to understand
that they're multilingual. But I, I don't, I don't know if
(24:30):
the actors are or are not. I'm assuming they're not because
in scenes where like for example, the team will be
speaking to like French civilians.
So we're meant to understand they're speaking French.
They just speak English with a French accent, or similarly, if
they're meant to be speaking with German people, they'll just
speak English with a German accent.
And that really tickles me. It also tickled me that this
(24:50):
actor Germany actor plays France.
He's also quite good at English,so when he speaks English you
almost forget that he's German. For sure, yeah, he's the
multilingual one. Everyone else.
Oh no, to be fair, I feel like most of them have some lines in
German and some lines in French in this show and it's not bad.
(25:19):
So episode 4. Yeah, they're in Toulouse.
The team is back behind enemy lines, and this time they're
there to smuggle a British airmen out of France.
And the reason why this guy getsspecial treatment because
normally they wouldn't waste, you know, like 5 or 6 secret
agents on this is because he's the son of a rich politician.
Yes, I did not like this guy very much.
(25:42):
It's not his fault, but still, it made me feel like, what the
heck are they doing? It made me feel kind of like the
team in savoring Private Ryan, who's like, why do we have to go
and save one guy? It felt like that.
Yeah. So we also need lounge singer
Hallie Duvernay, played by KarenLeBlanc, and she's clearly a
(26:05):
take on Josephine Baker. She's very cool and she agrees
to help them to try and get thisguy out, but only if they get
her fellow magician out of Jailhurst.
Also, I think maybe her lover. It's kind of open the air a
little bit. Yeah, I think it's implied.
A little info about Josephine Baker.
She was an American vaudeville star.
She became hugely popular in France in the 1920s.
(26:28):
At the time, she may well have been the wealthiest black woman
alive. She fled Paris in 1940 as the
Germans advanced, and she had a Chateau in the South of France.
So she sheltered many refugees at her home and ultimately,
knowing where her sympathies lay, she was approached to join
the resistance. And she said France made me what
I am. I will be grateful forever.
(26:50):
The people of Paris have given me everything.
I am ready to give them my life.You can use me as you wish,
which is badass as hell. And so she used her ability to
move in certain social circles, to go to parties and go to
meetings and collect informationfrom high-ranking Nazis.
And she also had resistance since fighters at her home, she
supplied them with visas. And when eventually the Nazi
(27:14):
started to suspect her, she had to flee France.
And she brought with her a significant amount of secret
intelligence to London. And when she returned to France
after D-Day, she raised money toprovide food and coal for fellow
Parisians. So really cool lady.
She was awarded the Qua de Gaia and the Rosetta, that easy
stance. And Charles Segal also named her
(27:34):
a Chevadier de Le Jean Donaio, which is the highest Order of
Merit for military and civil action.
Very cool. And the character in this, it's
obvious that she's based on her,but also she's just brazen as
hell. Like she talks back to the
Germans and everything. It's so cool.
Like Alfred and Aurora are in there in her club and the
(27:55):
Nancy's kind of do a raid on theclub and she just talks back to
them like nobody's business. Yeah, for sure.
I think it's kind of a thing where it's like if you act like
you have nothing to hide and that you're not afraid, then,
you know, maybe a lot of the times if you just stand up for
yourself, other people will backdown, you know?
And this is also where Aurora and Alfred, I like to call them
(28:19):
Alfie. I don't think anyone calls them
Alfie, but I do. You can call them Alfie.
They're not romantic yet, but they have to pretend to be
lovers and that is kind of the start of their little romance
moments. It's not that or it's just very
like in the background a little.Yeah, it's the it's the fake
(28:39):
dating story. We all love to see it.
I love it, though it's quite They all get arrested and it
doesn't really end well for the phantom musician that's in the
jail. But we also get a little side
plot in this episode, and it's Harry.
I didn't really get this episodetoo much for Harry, but he helps
(28:59):
a pregnant woman who is wounded in the accidental bombing that
occurred when the Ritz catch blame went down.
And it's like this whole thing where he helps her give birth
and then he takes the baby to the nuns.
And I'm like. Yeah.
Isn't there a part where he's just like carrying the baby and
some Nazis come upon him and they're like, where'd you get
that baby? Yes, they're like in a Jeep or
(29:23):
something and they come up and they come upon him and then they
give him a lift to the Abbey, I think.
Like we'll help you bring that baby.
Episode 5, They're in Saint Antoine and they are working
(29:44):
with a Vichy French mayor in order to blow up a train that
supplies U boats. And the reason why she's agreed
to help them is because a whole bunch of local young women have
disappeared. They've been taken by the S S
and she says I'll help you, but you have to find out what
happened to all these local village girls.
This episode, man, this episode is really tough watch because
(30:04):
it's about SSR running an Aryan forced birthing center with the
women that are being taken by the s s.
And it's like in this castle andit's quite like idyllic place if
it weren't what it actually was.Like.
We don't know right at the beginning.
We don't really know what's going on, but it's gross, you
(30:25):
guys. It's really disgusting.
So they go there and of course for it and the good guy that he
is wants to free all the women, even though it's going to be a
hell of a thing to do. It's quite difficult.
So they decide to use a trade explosion as a destruction, but
it does not go 100% according toplan.
(30:47):
Yeah, so this is from the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Nazi authorities created the Leben's Form program to increase
Germany's population. Pregnant German women deemed
quote UN quote, racially valuable were encouraged to give
birth to their children at Stevens foreign homes.
So this would include like single mothers, people who they
were trying to cut down on the abortion rate from quote, UN
(31:09):
quote racially valuable people. And it was weird.
And during World War 2, the program became complicit in the
kidnapping of foreign children with physical features
considered Aryan by the Nazis. And as you can imagine, as the
German Empire spread, many of those impregnated by the s, s
and German soldiers and civilians were foreign women,
with their consent or not, whosechildren could be taken by the
(31:30):
Levensborne program if the womenwere thought to be racially
pure. And they kind of in this episode
show you illustrations of the perfect nose and the perfect
face shape and all that sort of stuff.
So it's really, it's like breeding, like actual breeding
programs for Aryan people. Yeah, it's pretty gross for
(31:53):
sure. Back and come back.
Sergeant Christina has been talking to the britches behind
Sinclair's back, but he kind of knows, and he keeps her where he
can keep an eye on her. Yeah, she is super ambitious.
You can tell she really wants toget in on field work and stuff,
and Sinclair keeps frustrating her efforts to do that.
So yeah, I. Feel like he's like he knows to
(32:16):
her about it even when he does confront her and that's it
later, right and like the British and the.
Canadians are on the same side, however, obviously each party's
involved. They're going to have their own
priorities and maybe their own kind of little sub things
they've got going on, right? Just a note from this episode,
they find a defective bomb at one point that's been sabotaged
(32:37):
by people who were forced to make it for the Nazis.
And there were stories of this really happening from The Fall
of Fortresses by Elmer Bendiner.There's a story in particular
about German bombs being taken to be disarmed and found to have
no explosive charge. And there was a note inside one
of them in check that said this is all we can do for you now.
The book I'm reading right now, the women who flew for Hitler
(32:58):
later on in the war as their test flying planes, they keep
finding that the planes have been intentionally sabotaged by
the French workers who were making them.
And so this did happen. I mean, that's what's going to
happen if you use slave labor, right?
The people who are making stuff for you are going to go out of
their way to fuck it up. Yeah.
And the show does this quite. A lot where, like you said,
there are some actual little background things that aren't
(33:21):
that relevant to the plot, but they're giving you a sense of
what's going on in the real. I don't think any of the
missions are real, as far as we know anyway.
Some other are based on things that.
Happen in real life or scenarios, but when I was at
Juno Beach in 2019, where the Canadians landed at D-Day, there
are these German bunkers you cango in and visit.
(33:42):
And the German bunkers were built by French slave labor.
And what they've done is they'vesanded away the covering that
was put on the walls inside. And what you can see is that the
French, instead of putting the cinder blocks upright where
they're structurally sound, theywould put them on their side.
And of course that makes the bunker much more likely to
collapse if it gets hit by a bomb or something.
(34:02):
And so even then, right under the Nazis noses, people were
trying to sabotage them. There are small acts of.
Resistance on my mind? Absolutely, yeah.
Episode 6 During Mahman, Harry is seriously wounded during a
(34:25):
factory sabotage mission that's gone awry.
They have captured a German radio operator to try and get
them Intel that will allow them to escape the town because
they're kind of surrounded and they have to decide whether to
trust him. I love this episode.
This episode is probably my favorite end of the season.
It's so good. You get the feeling that this
(34:45):
radio operator is sort of like acurrent.
I think he's an officer, but he doesn't feel like that.
He feels like just a guy doing ajob.
And that's one of the conflicts in this episode because Neil has
to keep an eye on him and like he ties him up and he talks to
him and he gets to know him a little bit.
(35:06):
But then as the episode progresses, they decide that
they have to kill him. And Neil is the one who gets to
do that. He assumes, and they all do,
that this German has betrayed them.
But after Neil's killed him, some that took him quite a
little bit of time and effort todo because he didn't really want
(35:27):
to do it, They found out that this German has not in fact
betrayed them and he was going to crossover and join their
side. But they killed him.
So now Neil gets to live for this forever.
This is one of the things I love.
About this show is that this character who's such a bruiser
that I think if you were to see him in a traditional action
(35:47):
movie, he'd be the type who would just shoot a guy and walk
away. Cool as a But in this show
they've made it that even killing an enemy has a cost.
And it's something that especially once he finds out
that this guy did not in fact betray them, it really weighs
heavily on him, even though he'ssupposed to be this kind of hard
(36:07):
ass character. And I really liked that it
follows him all the way into. Far into season 2.
I can't speak for season 3 because I've not seen it yet.
The whole show does this thing where killing is never easy.
Everything. One of them struggles with
killing and you can see them hesitate and doubt and it's
(36:27):
always a choice. It's never just like a point
blank reaction or it's like a last resort.
Like they don't make it easier. Very many American movies make
killing look like this heroic but easy thing to do, and this
show does not at all. You can feel it.
It's quite heavy, absolutely. A young medic named Siobhan,
(36:50):
played by Emily Taffa is broughtin to help Harry and he takes a
shine to her, but unfortunately she turns out to be a Nazi
informer. No want.
Want also, Harry's given a lot of morphine, so he does quite a
bit of talking to this nurse. If I think she shouldn't be
talking about to this nurse. Yeah, he does really like her.
(37:13):
He does really like her. Like, I don't think he's
kidding. No, it sure comes.
Back to bite him in the ass as this episode was happening.
I knew it already because I thought she was quite eager to
help. She was brought in by, I think,
a guy who's high story. They're in a safe household and
I thought she would be like if this were an actual just
(37:36):
civilian that lived there or a nurse that lived there.
She seemed not reluctant enough to me, but I wasn't sure.
So when it when the end game, I was still a little bit
surprised. Like in a lot of shows where?
You get this mission of the weekformat, There are throwaway
characters, and this show doesn't really do that.
It's like you might get a character for more than one
(37:56):
episode or whatever, but at no time is anyone 100% in the clear
from getting killed or turning out to be a bad guy or whatever.
You know? I thought Siobhan, her
motivations. Are quite interesting because it
goes back to Ireland and not wanting English to be in Ireland
(38:17):
and she wants them to get out ofIreland and so the Germans have
promised her. Maybe she's a little naive.
They've told her look after we're done in Europe we'll come
over to Ireland and kick the English out for them.
Well, I mean, and there was. This is, you know, based on
historical fact. There was some support in
Ireland for the fascist cause, primarily because they were
(38:39):
fighting against the English. Exactly.
It's not in a form. Ground.
But if you wanted, you could go look up this little bit of
history again. So that's quite nice.
Episode 7. This is the first part of a
(39:00):
two-part episode, so the second last and the last episode of
this season. In Paris, the group is tasked
with assassinating French collaborators.
As you can imagine, they're a little bit hesitant about doing
this because they basically get a list of names from Sinclair's
British superior, Lieutenant Colonel George Mayhew, played by
Adrian Lucas. And something just seems off.
(39:23):
It's like they're being asked togo and assassinate a bunch of
civilians who may or may not have worked with the Nazi, and
it just feels kind of dicey to them.
Yeah, because there's there's. No proof.
They just have to believe what'son the paper.
Like they have to look at this photo and be like, OK, I'm just
going to go kill this guy. Which is again, goes back to the
the way the show makes killing has a lot of weight.
(39:45):
They don't do this easily. The one who struggles the most
is new because he sits in this guy's room.
He's waiting for this guy to return to his house.
And he sits there for a long time and he sees like a picture,
I think of his kid staring at him.
And he turns it around and he puts his gun down.
And you think, you almost think he's going to get out of there.
(40:08):
He's not going to go and do it. So when when the time comes for
him to actually shoot this person, he doesn't because he
doesn't get. The choice because they end up
like grappling on the floor and he gets his ass handed to him a
little bit first. It's a very violent.
Physical fight. So Aurora.
Like, each of them has their ownperson to kill, and Aurora is
(40:31):
tasked with killing someone who turns out to be someone she
knows from before. Yeah, and.
Tom, when he finds his target, she's providing medical care to
a man named Drabik, played by Craig Parkinson.
And he at first is a little bit like, like kind of leery because
(40:51):
he's, you know, seeing this woman being helpful.
And he finds out that Drabik is trying to get Intel to the
Allies about the concentration camp.
And then and the woman that Tom's supposed to kill ends up
selling them out to the Gestapo.So turns out she was a
collaborator, but Tom manages tokill her and get Drabik to
safety. And Drabik not a real person
(41:11):
necessarily, but this is the first time that the
concentration camps are really coming up.
And it's difficult to say precisely in real life, when the
Allies quote, UN quote, knew about the Holocaust, Of course,
the word Holocaust wasn't used until much later.
They did not really have the, I guess, verbiage for this kind of
thing that we have now. But the Allied governments
(41:33):
released a statement about it inDecember of 1942, condemning
what the Germans were doing. But it's clear that reports were
coming in for many months beforethat.
And a central figure in blowing the whistle is Gerhard Wigner,
who was a German Jew who heard from extensive business contacts
in the summer of 1942 that the Germans were planning on using
the pesticides Zyklon B to exterminate Jews on mass.
(41:55):
And he tried to get this information to American and
British decision makers, but intelligent intermediaries were
really skeptical until more reports started coming out and
it became kind of unavoidable. You would be that, wouldn't you?
Because it's such a unbelievablething.
Like you, you don't want to believe that humans can do that
to other human beings. Yeah, for sure.
(42:18):
So our. Nazi friend.
I say friend, but he's not our friend.
Faber has other problems besidestrucking the team down because
he has a little sidekick called Victor Forst, played by Julian M
Deyster. And he has thinking he's helping
him, quote, UN quote, reported his disabled son, which will
(42:41):
mean reporting means that he will get picked up by a bus and
taken somewhere, I'm guessing some kind of camp.
And he will not be long for thisworld.
Yeah, it's. Man, it's tough because as soon
as father learns that his son has been reported, he already
knows that his son is going to be killed.
(43:02):
And my guy, the cognitive dissonance of working your ass
off for this regime that you already know would kill your son
if they knew, and that's why youwere hiding him.
And so he's obviously so upset when he finds out that his son
has been reported. But you're also kind of like,
dude, nobody asked you to work for the Nazis.
(43:23):
Like this is a career choice that you made and also his.
Wife. He's got no clue.
Oh yeah, she has no idea. She's in this happy little
mindset where she's like, oh, they're going to pick up our son
on a bus and take him to a nice summer camp where he gets to
hang out with other disabled kids.
Like literally zero clue. I wonder though it.
Feels super naive to me. It feels like one of those
(43:46):
German people are just pretendednot to know.
I don't think she knows, but it's like, how can you not know?
Well, it's it's one of those things.
Where, you know, you're you're living your happy little nice,
pleasant upper middle class lifeand you don't want to rock the
boat or make waves. And honestly, I think it's one
of those things where even if you kind of know the borderline
(44:09):
of what's happening, maybe the rough shape of it, I don't think
in your wildest imagination you would imagine like the
infrastructure of the Holocaust.So I think obviously it's silly
and she's completely naive. But I do think there were
probably people who were like, Oh yeah, like the Jews are
getting picked up and we never see them again.
And then they just don't think about it any further than that,
(44:31):
which is not excuse for anythingthat happened.
But I mean, you and I know people who don't read the news
now. I used to be one of us.
Yeah, we're out there. It's like sticking your head in.
The sand because it's the most convenient and then you
genuinely do not know what's going on well and even you know.
Even after Kristallnacht, you had garbles out here being like,
(44:54):
we didn't touch a hair on a single Jew's head, and why would
you be reporting that terrible propaganda?
So the government was denying that all this was happening.
And if you're someone who is enjoying your little life and
you don't want to think too much, you're going to be like,
OK, I'll trust the government. Yeah.
Yeah. Also, I mean, Faber's wife,
she's interesting character. We'll meet her a little more in
Season 2, but obviously someone who's lived at an extremely
(45:16):
privileged life, she's very sheltered.
So yes, yes, yes, yes, by the way.
What did you think of first? I hate First.
He's pretending to be his friend, but he's also furthering
his his own career. Oh yeah, He's like, oh, I.
Guess what, I did you a huge favor.
I reported your disabled son andit's just like OK, thank you I
(45:39):
guess. Yeah he sucks but luckily he go
and get his comeuppance. Right.
So Episode 8, the season finale.As the team try to reach their
(46:00):
rendezvous point in the catacombs, they realize that a
massive roundup of Jews is underway.
And, of course, they have just learned about the extent of what
is happening to these Jews who get rounded up and deported.
And so they're determined that they're going to smuggle out
Drabak, the Holocaust witness, so that he can get this
information and sound the alarm to the world.
Yeah, this episode was good. I really enjoyed this as a Susan
(46:24):
finale. It's quite good.
So we get a couple little different pairs of characters in
this episode again, so many makecoffees of a pamphlet to try and
get the message out to people tofight back.
And it's actually Tom's Ed man skills that make him.
He makes like this really prettypoem that they put on on a
(46:45):
pamphlet, which I quite liked. But then Tommy shot trying to
help him juice as capture and you're like, Oh no, what's going
to happen to Tom? We don't know literally because
this show. Will literally kill a main
character. They don't give a shit.
Yvonne, who has returned to lurethe team and do a trap, has a
(47:06):
crisis of conscience and she reveals that she was a double
agent because she learns the true nature of what the Germans
are doing. Like she also was in the dark
about the concentration camps and all that stuff.
And so when she finds out, she reveals to the team that she was
a double agent the whole time. And she's like, look, when Harry
was high, he told me a bunch of shit and I told it all of the
(47:26):
Germans. So now the Germans know all
about Alfred, unfortunately, in his photographic memory, and
they're going to be tracking himdown.
And obviously Harry feels prettyterrible about this.
He does because he did. Really like her now he feels
really guilty that he said all this stuff about his team to
this girl who is just also when Aurora finds her and she's
(47:51):
trying to, I don't know, take a bunch of painkillers.
That scene is brutal. Or it's like, you don't get to
die, you're coming with me. Oh yeah, I totally forgot about.
That actually now that the Nazisknow about.
You just know that he's got all this valuable information in his
head, right? So they have to go and get him.
Guess what they do? They capture him.
(48:13):
Aurora is supposed to shoot him because he's got all the secrets
of all the operations and all that, and she's supposed to
shoot him. But she looks at him as they
hold him, and she can't do it. She shakes her head at him and
he looks at her. Remember this sad eyes.
This guys got such sad ass. He does, and I really.
(48:33):
Liked this because we're going to find out later when Aurora is
asked to make another super tough choice about killing
someone. She does it, she follows through
with it. And so the fact that she doesn't
kill Alfred when Sinclair has told her that at all costs, we
do not let Alfred get captured because he has all this
information and he can basicallydestroy our entire network in
(48:56):
France. Even though she knows how
important it is, she can't do it.
So this is a huge, huge character moment for her.
I made a joke. About the actor who plays Alfred
when I when I was watching this,not this episode specifically
but this face. This man falls.
He just looks like unhappy all the time and tense all the time.
He's just working meme. He does to be fair I think.
(49:18):
He is probably tense and I'm still not happy all the time.
And right after we see Aurora have this intense moment where
we realized the strength of her feelings for Alfred, we find out
that Renee is still alive and he's been captured by the
Germans who planted false evidence about his death and
they've been holding him the whole time.
And funny detail about this. Alfred knew about this.
(49:42):
He didn't tell anyone, but he figured it out.
Yeah, he sort of looked at. The fabrication that the Germans
had done and was like, this doesn't make any sense.
Like he's probably still alive, but he didn't have, like, proof.
Proof, I guess, in another shocking moment.
No one has asked for in this episode, Franz Faber, as a sign
of mercy, kills his own son before he gets taken away by the
(50:06):
Nazis. Yeah, it's.
Oh my God, y'all. He's crying.
The son doesn't understand what's happening.
Like and the, the Sabina Franz'swife is outside the door and
she's also crying and it's absolutely gutting.
And I actually, part of me was like, surely because they kind
(50:26):
of cut away so you don't actually watch a child get
smothered to death. And part of me was like, maybe
he chickens out at the last second and like, actually his
son gets smuggled to safety. Like I thought that was a
genuine possibility. I wasn't sure if the show was
going to go there. And then it definitely did.
And I was like, Oh my God, man, it's so fucking rough.
Yeah. And I'm like.
(50:47):
I don't want to feel sympathy for this man.
I don't need him to be on our side.
I'm fine with him being evil. Don't make me feel stuff for
him. But you do.
You feel for him as a father. I think you're meant to feel for
him as a father and as a human being.
Yeah. It's killer writing for.
Sure, and we also get right at the end our first D Up mention.
(51:11):
The D Up raid is going to be a major factor in the plot in
coming seasons. So right now we're July 1942 and
and the D Up raid took place on the 19th of August.
So it's coming up we're going totell you more about the.
D Upra in the next episode. Yes, we absolutely are.
(51:37):
I have a just a couple notes about.
Camp XI Read this book called Inside Camp X by Lynn Philip
Hodgson and the camp itself opened December 6th, 1941.
And the reason why this state isrelevant is because just just
before Pearl Harbor and the Americans entering the war and
when it was built, it was between Whitby and Oshawa on the
(51:58):
shores of Lake Ontario. It was a collaborative effort
between the British Security Coordination and the Canadian
government, and part of its initial purpose was to link
Britain and the US when the US was still officially neutral.
So it's kind of a little sneaky,sneaky backdoor.
Here's how we can communicate without anybody knowing.
The area today is known as Intrepid Park, and the reason
why it's called that is it's named after the wartime
(52:19):
intelligence code name for the BSCS director, Canadian soldier
and spymaster Sir William Stevenson, who was famously an
inspiration for James Bond. Ian Fleming himself once wrote
James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true
spy. The real thing is William
Stevenson. So cool, right?
Again, I'll just say again. And again and again.
(52:39):
This is such a cool show and I wish more people knew about it.
So I'm so glad we're doing this episode.
Me too. And.
I'm beyond excited to explore more as the seasons progress
because I just feel like it keeps getting better.
Like I almost want to say Season3 is my favorite season, but I'm
like maybe I was just more invested by then, you know?
Yeah, I don't know. I'm.
(53:00):
Nearly at the end of Season 2 right now, so I'm slightly
behind, but I will be caught up by the time we do more
recording. We are going to rate this show,
but we're going. To wait until until we get all
the way to the end because it's hard to read.
Seasons each on their own. Yeah, for sure.
(53:25):
Are you reading anything? I am reading something I.
Am reading unauthorized action Mountbatten and the D up raid by
Brian Loring Villa. I just started it last night and
oh boy, I haven't read a book bya real historian in a while.
And I don't mean that in the sense that like journalists and
other people who write history oriented books are not quote UN
(53:46):
quote real historians, but I just mean like this guy actually
is a historian. He studied history, and so the
first part of the book is him being like, here's good other
historians have said about Diab.I'm gonna tell you why they're
wrong. So I'm really looking forward to
reading the next event. That sounds great.
Yeah. I'm also reading another book.
I've been keeping up on my reading guys.
(54:08):
I am reading The Spy Who Loved by Claire Molly after finishing
Agents Are by Claire Molly, and if this is telling you anything,
someone's reading The Woman Who Flew for Hitler, also by Claire
Molly. We might have a Claire Molly
related episode coming up for you soon.
Yeah, y'all should check out her.
Books if you haven't, but even if you haven't, I'm sure you're
(54:30):
going to enjoy the episode Yes, that's all for.
Today, folks, thank you so much for listening.
You can find us wherever you getyour podcasts on Apple, on
Spotify, on Amazon, wherever thefuck you want.
You can send an episode to your friends.
You should definitely send this episode to your friend so more
people get to know about X Company.
And you can follow us on Instagram at Rosie Reviewer
(54:53):
Podcast or visit ourwebsite@rosiereviewer.com.
I've recently been posting some related articles in there if
you're interested. And rate US five stars once
you're there, I don't care. Yes, we do care.
Rate US 5. Stars also y'all definitely
check out the website because Mart is underselling it.
(55:14):
Everything that she posts on there is really good and you
should go check it out. Thank you.
See you next week. Bye.
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