The Heavy Water War: Stopping Hitler's Atomic Bomb

I'm getting older and while I'm still stubbornly trying to resist, the consequences are becoming more and more apparent. Painfully visible. Suddenly, hair grows in places where you never thought it possible and where you could always rely on a large bunch of flowing black, now a lot of uncovered skull is shining. As if that wasn't bad enough, my subconscious mind recently decided to stick to that maximum speed on the highway and that apparently this works best with the monotonous chatter of Radio 1 over the speakers. Do you feel my pain ?! It's terrible. The most annoying thing about this process of irreversible deterioration - let's just call it by name - is that I have the feeling that I am increasingly escaping things, and I don't like that at all. For example, I only recently found out that Anderson .Paak existed and also came to the Netherlands when his concert in Paradiso Tolhuistuin had already been sold out for a long time. I wanted to bang my fist on the table when I heard it, but it doesn't make my bones stronger either, so I didn't take that risk. Even in the field of series, the sights are not always sharp anymore, because last week it turned out that The Heavy Water War had flown sneaky under my radar. This war epos was already thrown into the world by the Norwegians at the beginning of last year, but that memo apparently didn't get stuck on my fridge door. The only advantage of this approaching dementia is that you suddenly have a whole season to put your teeth in and that is nice. Especially when it concerns such a gem as The Heavy Water War. It is 1932 and Heisenberg has won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Not the Heisenberg who was baking crack together with Jesse in a dilapidated trailer, but the German founder of quantum mechanics, Werner Heisenberg. Normally this token of recognition would be the runner-up for a glorious career, were it not for the fact that a small frustrated Austrian in the late 1930s threw a spanner in the works. Hitler has set his sights on the world map and every significant German scientist is hired to achieve that. Werner may not have to eat canned beans in some soggy trench, but he does have to think about ways to wipe the enemy off the face of the earth faster and more efficiently. No fun either. While somewhere in New Mexico on a barren plain, the ultra-secret Manhattan project is supposed to provide an answer to Hitler's drive for expansion, Heisenberg is secretly tinkering with a nuclear reactor in Germany. Who will be the first to have a bomb that is so powerful that you can wipe away the make-up layer on Trijntje Oosterhuis' head with childlike ease? If it is up to the British and the Norwegians, it is certainly not the Germans. Together they devise a plan to ensure that their zjùrmùns do not have access to all the raw materials that are needed to build an atomic bomb. Exciting! The Heavy Water War has that typical vibe you know from the better films and series about the Second World War. That vibe from Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter and Der Untergang. Stylistically it is very well put together, but visually it is not new. Not that that is a condition for one thing or the other, but then you know for sure. Despite the rumors that history is being violated here and there - how 'wrong' was Weisenberg actually in the war and was he really not averse to male flesh? - gives The Heavy Water War a nice glimpse into a chapter of World War II that few people know. It offers more than enough brackets for an exciting story about war missions at a time when you couldn't take down an entire village from the comfort of your chair with the help of a drone. Retroactively in the 2015 Best Series list www.gumstarr.com

Have now seen all six episodes. Really a topper. It is a pity that such (war) series are not made in the Netherlands.