Nazis on film and television are not generally presented in a sympathetic manner.
Instead, they are presented as fellows with a tendency towards a sort of vindictive spitefulness coupled, on the whole, with a ruthless ambition to commit evil acts.
And they wear evil uniforms.
The Nazis on Spies of Warsaw fit neatly into this category.
They have chiselled jaws; not the sort, though, that appeal.
These jaws frame a sneering, thin-lipped, malevolent grimace.
Then there is the hapless German engineer caught in a honey trap of lust and betrayal.
He is a man of obvious intelligence, but he is weak: his harried eyes dart fearfully behind a pair of circular wire-rimmed glasses, and he has a Hitler-style moustache he cannot quite pull off; he walks on skinny legs in short bustling steps that give him a faintly ridiculous air.
He is a figure of fun; a jowly, ageing would-be Lothario being used for his access to the latest German tank designs.
Then there is our hero.
His spare, sinewy frame bears the scars of battle.
A bayonet has left an angry dark-red star beneath his ribs, while his shoulder tells the story of a bullet that ripped through it.
His tousled black hair curls in ringlets over dark eyes that smoulder with intensity.
It is 1937, but only he sees clearly that war is coming to Europe.
Oh yeah - and he's Doctor Who.
That's probably why he knows about the future, and that.
He is David Tennant, after all.
He stars in the Spies of Warsaw, an adaptation of Alan Furst's apparently celebrated spy novel set in the years leading up to World War 2.
It is not Furst's first novel, by the way.
Oh that it was; the hilarity!
In Spies of Warsaw, Tennant is Colonel Jean Francois Mercier, the new military attaché to the French embassy in the Polish capital.
The colonel by night wears lavish dress uniforms to lavish dress parties that swirl with ball gowns and plunging necklines, and by day dons a cheese cutter cap and the garb of Warsaw street vendor to go out spying.
His wife has died of consumption, as one did in those days, leaving him free to keep the ladies happy in a carnal sort of fashion as he goes about his duties.
Things get hairy when the engineer is kidnapped by the evil Nazis as the machinery of war grinds ever louder across the border.
Will the colonel save the day?
Are the mixed reviews elsewhere fair about the Spies of Warsaw?
Is a paint-by-numbers World War 2 spy caper such a bad thing?
Probably not.
Give it a go, at least, on UKTV, Mondays at 8.30pm from December 9.
- Charles Loughrey
