Main cast: Martin Kemp (Lieutenant Luger), Nickolas Grace (Albert Frye), Nick Reding (Krupp), Roy Dotrice (Major Nicholson), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Peter MacDonald
Oh, that guy from Spandau Ballet is in this one! Martin Kemp is Lieutenant Luger, a German soldier who relies on his wit and trades his allegiances in order to stay alive throughout World War 2. He is currently held in Havenhurst, a POW camp, and he trades information for favors. It is all in a day’s work when he joined a group of German soldiers breaking out of the camp, but not before snitching to the British soldiers. Sure, when it is revealed in the opening scene of Escape that he has deliberately led his buddies back to the soldiers, those soldiers end up gunning down those men when they flee. Hey, better them than him, right?
Unfortunately for him, there is a new commander in Havenhurst, and Major Nicholson does not approve one bit of him and the deals he made with his underlings. He thinks Luger a coward and refuses to honor the deal Luger made with the previous commander for the latest snitch job. So the poor guy is thrown back out to sulk with the rest of the POWs. But that’s the least of our protagonist’s worries: a new “addition” to the camp understands English and has overheard enough to know what Luger has done. Worse, one of the men shot at the opening scene isn’t quite dead yet – he’s taken into the camp hospital, and should that man recover, Luger is so done. Desperate to keep his cover, he agrees to lead one more escape plan while plotting to eliminate all of those that can expose his rear end. Will he succeed, or will he get his just desserts in the end?
Well, duh. One of the biggest issue with Escape is that it leaves itself with no means of providing any suspense or tension, hence ending up a very predictable episode. It takes quite a bit of time to set Luger up as a man to root against, and let’s face it, the show will not have the testicles to let a German Nazi triumph in the end. So there is no twist, just a slow, draggy meandering episode to sit through as it builds up to this inevitable, predictable denouement. Along the way, there are head-scratchers such as German soldiers talking in English even among themselves and them thinking that a man who escaped and then get caught a while later would be the ideal person to help them plan another escape. And why does Major Nicholson have such a hate hat on for Luger that he would hypocritically do the very same thing that he despises Luger for? He actually calls the German POWs “good soldiers”, making him kind of lawful stupid to a bewildering degree.
At any rate, this episode is not very entertaining or well put together.
