PRIVATE SCHULZ INSPIRED BY OPERATION BERNHARD

The curious case of the counterfeit cash proved to be the comic lifeblood for Private Schulz, a six-part comedy-drama series penned by the renowned Jack Pulman and transmitted shortly after his death in May 1981.

The famously bungled endeavours of German forces to flood Britain with counterfeit currency in a campaign to destabilise the British economy during wartime was of a historical circumstance always open to a darkly comic treatment, and under Pulman's experienced handling the series proved to be one of the more notable entries into BBC Television's early-1980s schedules.

The story itself concerned the release from Spandau prison of Gerhard Schulz (played by Michael Elphick), a former purveyor of "smalls" who has been in and out of prison on a relative revolving door for various fraudulent activities. Determined to serve out the Second World War from as far behind the lines as possible, he undertakes a desk job at the Postal Censorship department so as to remain clear of the hostilities and push a pen throughout the conflict.

However, the simple life he so readily pursues is soon interrupted when he is mistakenly recruited by SS Counter Espionage to serve under Major Neuheim (Ian Richardson), a man with an eye on the main chance and always prepared to serve the German cause, provided that the cause serves him to equal or additional measure. SS Counter Espionage, charged with providing the Third Reich with new and more interesting ideas and concepts on how to win the war by frustrating their enemies, proved precisely the right place for Schulz to exercise his talents: a bold plan to drop forged five-pound notes from the sky across Britain.

A thoroughly mad scheme which would only appeal to equally insane visionaries, Neuheim almost immediately claimed ownership of the idea and set Schulz to work on the detail. He employed the services of counterpart Solly (Cyril Shaps), a master forger who would ensure the success of the plan, whilst he himself wiled away his days at Salon Kitty in the company of Bertha Freyer (Billie Whitelaw), where he keep an eye trained on other people's conversations (usually from the bedroom) so as to further his own ends.

Later, Schulz undertook covert operations inside the United Kingdom, armed with the forged currency and determined to make his brainchild succeed, yet ill-at-ease with British protocol (ordering a coffee in a Public House was always going to prove to be his undoing), and upon his return to Germany he once again locked horns with Neuheim, who was quite happy to blame Schulz for the failure of the plan in equal measure to his dogged pursuit of glory at its creation. The story spanned the period from the summer of 1939 to the end of the war, with Schulz emerging as a penniless man of little or no social standing, but on the trail of a fair proportion of the forged currency he buried after parachuting into the United Kingdom in 1940.

To read the complete article, see: Private Schulz BBC 1981 (www.startrader.co.uk/Action%20TV/guide80s/prvtschulz.htm)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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