Resistance

Instead of 'Anzac Girls', More 4 now brings us a French WWII version of 'Spy Kids'.  Well OK, it's not as bad as it sounds, in fact it's more akin to the recent 'Saboteurs', which shaped up rather well.  This does at least eschew exposition, to the point where we wondered whether, five minutes in, we were watching the second or third episode rather than the first.  The viewer is plunged straight into Occupied France with only what he or she has learned in class to help them.  Luckily we made it through the first episode and are alive to see another one, as we quickly learned that the Museum of Mankind (rough translation) in Paris is the seat of an underground resistance movement churning out anti-Nazi leaflets on a hand-cranked press.  A lot of the couriers are still at school or of student age, so we are more in 'White Rose' territory, since this too is based on real events.

It's tense and very earnest, with Lili and her peers acting their socks off despite their pretty 21st Century faces.  They mention frequently how hungry they are, but look in blooming health, and so far there has been little in the way of moral dilemmas.  The teenagers and their mentors have backstories that may yet yield something, but we currently don't doubt any of them, with the villains depicted squarely as Nazis or police collaborators.  They speak to one another very freely about resistance, even in public places, and even with the justification of not yet realising just how brutal their new oppressors are, we wonder how the entire resistance wasn't wiped out prior to 1942.