Drama / Crime / War & Politics
"Löwengrube – Die Grandauers und ihre Zeit" is a German television series first aired between 1989 and 1992, created by Willy Purucker and directed by Rainer Wolffhardt. It is set in Munich and follows the lives of Ludwig Grandauer and his son Karl, both policemen, covering the…


1897 - 1907: Ludwig Grandauer is a policeman in a village somewhere between Munich and Bad Tölz. A murder occurs after his wedding party, of all things. Suspicion falls on a peddler, Grandauer finds the real culprit years later.

May 1909: Karl Grandauer's bicycle is stolen. Afraid of his father's punishment, Karl keeps quiet about the theft. But the butcher Willy has a plan to raise the necessary capital for a new bike: Nude photos of a girl from the neighborhood.

The Grandauer family is worried about the health of mother Agnes. While their daughter Luise takes over the housework for her mother, Ludwig Grandauer has to visit the family of a murder suspect.

1914: The Munich police department moves into the long-awaited new building in the Löwengrube, while at home Luise Grandauer falls in love with Karl's friend Biwi. Now, of all times, the First World War breaks out.

December 1918: Germany has lost the First World War, food is running short, and the Spanish flu keeps killing large numbers of people. When Karl Grandauer comes back to Munich, he finds his family's old apartment inhabited by strangers

October 1920: A dead woman is found at the side of a small road, with a sign labelling her a traitor to her fatherland. During investigation, Karl Grandauer comes across Traudl Soleder again

1923: Karl Grandauer and Traudl Soleder want to get married. But inflation makes the wedding dress and the suit for the groom very expensive. Then childhood friend Willy offers his help.

November 9, 1923: The Soleders are moving out of their expensive apartment into police seargent Karl Grandauer's new official residence, but streets are blocked due to the ongoing Beer Hall Putsch, that started the night before, and Karl is prevented from leaving the police headquarters for some time.

October 22, 1929: Kurt Soleder is working as a presenter at the Munich radio station, when one of his musicians is coming in late due to some sudden sickness; minutes later the man is dead. Police finds out that he died from cyanide poisoning after eating some of the marzipan potatoes he got from the girl with whom he had spent the night.

Autumn 1931: A young man distributing the communist newspaper Die Rote Fahne is beaten up and deadly injured by two vigilantes, who claim that they caught him while breaking a shop-window to steal a radio, and that they only used violence when the alleged burglar put up a fight while being arrested.

January 30, 1933: Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. Chief inspector Grüner is leaving to spend a few weeks in a health resort, and replaced for the time by inspector Walter Deinlein, who fears to have irritated district attorney Adolf Grandauer by uttering a condescending comment about the new cabinet. Kurt and Sara Soleder come to visit Adelgunde on her name day, while Sara is heavily pregnant. Adolf Grandauer offers his sister Luise to convey substantial orders for the Nazi party to her husband's bakery, but advises them to get rid of their journeyman Toni, a leftist who has been caught up in street fights with the SA.

March 1933: Two policemen come to the Kreitmeiers’ bakery with a search warrant for the room of their journeyman, confiscating brass knuckles and some communist propaganda posters. Inspector Karl Grandauer is called to a gravel pit, where a dead boy with a bullet in his head has been found. Later, a mute swill dealer is arrested while carrying the gun the deadly shot was fired from. Mr. Hampel, Grandauer's former subordinate, who has just been transferred to the political police, gets a written confession out of the man, who previously claimed to have found the weapon on the ground. Eventually, one of the deceased boy's comrades from the Hitler Youth comes forward, admitting that he had taken his father's old army pistol to practice shooting in the gravel pit, where he accidentally killed his friend, leaving the gun behind.

March 21, 1933: An elderly Jewish man has killed himself by opening the gas-tap in his apartment, apparently in despair of the rampant antisemitic agitation in Germany; the Grandauers take care of his surviving dog. While many people are listening to President Hindenburg's and Chancellor Hitler’s speeches broadcast from the Day of Potsdam, Sara Soleder gives birth to a daughter. Baker Max Kreithmeier’s journeyman Toni, a staunch leftist, is imprisoned in the new established Dachau concentration camp.
Ludwig Grandauer / Karl Grandauer

Traudl Grandauer
Adelgunde Soleder

Kurt Soleder
Sara Soleder

Adolf Grandauer

Friedrich Deinlein


The Bletchley Circle follows the journey of four ordinary women with extraordinary skills that helped to end World War II. Set in 1952, Susan, Millie, Lucy and Jean have returned to their normal lives, modestly setting aside the part they played in producing crucial intelligence, which helped the Allies to victory and shortened the war. When Susan discovers a hidden code behind an unsolved murder she is met by skepticism from the police. She quickly realises she can only begin to crack the murders and bring the culprit to justice with her former friends. The Bletchley Circle paints a vivid portrait of post-war Britain in this fictional tale of unsung heroes.

In 1945, during the final months of the Second World War, a group of soldiers perform for the Royal Artillery concert party, with comic acts and musical numbers for others prior to their departure for the frontlines. The party avoids partaking in combat duty; thus, the soldiers love being part of the outfit. Some even daydream of becoming world-famous actors when they leave the army.

Island at War is a British television series that tells the story of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands. It primarily focuses on three local families: the upper class Dorrs, the middle class Mahys and the working class Jonases, and four German officers. The fictional island of St. Gregory serves as a stand-in for the real-life islands Jersey and Guernsey, and the story is compiled from the events on both islands. Produced by Granada Television in Manchester, Island at War had an estimated budget of £9,000,000 and was filmed on location in the Isle of Man from August 2003 to October 2003. When the series was shown in the UK, it appeared in six 70-minute episodes.

Over the past 60 years Britain's Special Air Service regiment has carried out a wide variety of clandestine missions - from deep-penetration raiding to hostage release operations - which have made it respected and feared for its professionalism and daring. The SAS prides itself on doing its work in the shadows, never allowing any publicity and never claiming credit for any of its extraordinary achievements. But, over the years, sufficient information has emerged for a picture of the regiment's exploits to be clear. This series uses interviews with former members of the SAS; detailed and painstaking reconstructions; and cutting edge 3-D graphics to recreate seven great missions which show why the SAS is today regarded as the world's leading special forces unit.

Colditz is a British television series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974. The series deals with Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle when designated Oflag IV-C during World War II, and their many attempts to escape captivity, as well as the relationships formed between the various nationalities and their German captors.
Willibald Leitner

Max Kreitmeier
Katharina Kreitmeier

Kargus

Rudi Grandauer