It was pulled from the air after just one episode and dubbed "perhaps the world's most tasteless situation comedy."
Now the creator of an ill-fated 1990 British sitcom that depicted Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as a bickering suburban couple has broken his silence, explaining what happened behind the scenes of one of TV's most notorious failures.
Heil Honey I'm Home! was intended as a spoof of mid-20th century sitcoms like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners, and saw Hitler and Braun living next door to a Jewish couple, the Goldensteins, who Hitler couldn't stand.
How long before Neil McCaul realised he'd made a huge mistake?Source:YouTube
It was ... weird. Really weird. Eight episodes were shot but only the pilot ever screened, and was met with immediate backlash.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews denounced the show as "in very bad taste," saying that "we are against any trivialisation of the Second World War, Hitler or the Holocaust."
They were also keen to point out that it wasn't even funny: "I imagine very few intelligent people will watch it once they see a few seconds of it," said spokesman Hayim Pinner.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the show's writer Geoff Atkinson reflects on the bizarre career blip, admitting that Heil's initial premise as a dark comedic satire just didn't translate on screen.
"I worried the argument would be 'You can't make fun of Hitler.' But he cries out for it. If you have a monster like that, and everyone says, 'You can't make fun of him,' then we've made him even more a monster," said Atkinson, conceding that the program didn't "entirely deliver."
"It felt corny," he said. "The slapsticky stuff made it ... dumb. It's not clever, it's not subtle, it's not smart, it's just dumb. What we wanted was satire."
Atkinson said he was grateful the show had failed in 1990, rather than in today's climate - without social media to fan the flames of outrage, the backlash was relatively contained and never became front page news.
But despite the reaction, he said he thought the show could be remade - provided it was done properly.
Yeesh.Source:YouTube
"I don't think the premise would be different. In this strange world of what do the Goldensteins do given the man next to them is a monster who wants to kill them, I still think that works for a comedy, a dark comedy," he said, adding that he has no qualms about the pilot being freely available on YouTube.
"If as a result of it [being available online], Netflix phoned and said, "Okay, you can do six more episodes," I would be the happiest person in the world."
