Englisch Fur Anfanger (1982-1983)

Me and Englisch Fur Anfänger go back to the late 1990s, when during the heyday of satellite television in the UK we were able to pick up a shed-load of German TV channels. While waiting for our own Granada Plus to start broadcasting their archive shows like 'Supersonic', 'Bowler' and 'Mind Your Language' on a Saturday morning, I tended to channel surf around the more academic minded German TV channels, who would run these "How to Learn English" educational shorts which dated back to the 1970s and 1980s. The majority of these were from a TV series that ran from 1982 to 1983 called Englisch fur Anfänger ('English for Beginners'). Hosted by the bearded, scholarly looking Graham Pascoe, Englisch fur Anfänger centered around Jane and Russell, and their jolly adventures in England.

Jane and Russell

The actors who played these two roles, Jane Egan and Russell Grant, lent their real names to their onscreen characters. These names however are the only consistent aspect to the characters, who are otherwise reinvented from episode to episode. In some Jane and Russell are a married couple, in others they are brother and sister, while sometimes they are co-workers. Russell's occupation also varies from episode to episode, from policeman to news reporter, travel agent, driving instructor, history professor, pop star and tennis player, Russell Grant has done ‘em all. German audiences sure must have thought it was easy to change jobs in 1980s Britain. Russell is even able to change race at one point, showing up as a Middle-Eastern businessman in the episode 'A Working Breakfast'. Jane is also no slouch when it comes to jumping from one guise to another. Over the course of English Fur Anfänger, she is a journalist, a schoolgirl, an oversexed housewife, a Brummie darts player and channels her anarchic side for the episode 'A Stroll in Covent Garden' in which Jane and Russell are punks on the lookout for a book of stamps and a birthday card for Russell's grandmother (very punk of them). Each episode is designed to navigate the audience around the complexities of the English language and culture, with Graham Pascoe -proud owner of an extensive line of unfashionable sweaters- chipping in some questionable cultural observations like "many British people enjoy inventing things as a hobby" and "generally people in Great Britain prefer to live in their own houses, even if they are quite small". Typical Jane and Russell adventures include Jane and Russell going on a picnic ('A Picnic at Windsor') competing against each other in a darts match ('The Darts Champion') joining an amateur dramatics society ('Rehearsal') and catching the DIY bug for the episode 'Do It Yourself' in which Russell makes a hash of building a desk. The simplified, unnatural sounding dialogue "It's a T-Shirt...whose is it?...its Jane's...it belongs to her...its her's" was of course, written with an audience trying to learn English in mind. Still it can be very funny indeed when seen outside of that context. Series director Ian MacNaughton had previously worked with Spike Milligan and directed episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and there are more than a few nods in those directions as Englisch Fur Anfanger progresses. The Python influence is strong in the episode 'It Never Rains, but it Pours' in which Russell plays a Python-esque cretin with a handkerchief on his head, who breaks his leg, then finds himself at the mercy of a blood splattered nurse (played by Jane) and a doctor who is eventually revealed to be a vampire.

For a walk on the creepy side there is 'At the Lost Property Office' in which Jane and Russell are depicted as windup dolls, complete with oversized props surrounding them and huge keys on their backs. Can scatterbrained doll Jane, who works at the lost property office, put a smile on the face of a sad doll (Russell) who has lost his trumpet? It's a premise that for once justifies the robotic approach to dialogue delivery that Englisch Fur Anfänger dictated its actors adopt.

"I want to play a game"

The series takes a diversion into bargain basement Sci-Fi territory with 'How a Car is Made'. A deceptively mundane sounding episode that belies one of Englisch Fur Anfänger's wilder outings, which wouldn't be out of place in Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man. In this Jane and Russell get a guided tour around a car manufacturing plant run by Dr Bright (Dave Savile) and his assistant Ms Smile. Bright is an evil capitalist with a robotic hand, who has been replacing shop floor workers with robots. "Mistakes are made by men, robots can do no wrong" explains Bright. Naturally the plan backfires, with Ms Smile turning out to be an undercover robot and Bright's robot hand malfunctioning, forcing him to kill Russell, then strangle himself.

For a block of later episodes, Englisch fur Anfänger relocates Jane and Russell's adventures to America. Allowing veteran actor Alan Tilvern, who I'd always assumed to be American (but it seems was actually born in Whitechapel) to become a series regular. Most notably as the Richard Nixon parody character 'Senator Gatewater' in the episode 'Washington D.C'.

For a UK audience there is an extra layer of comedy to Englisch Fur Anfänger, on account of the lead actor and lead character being called Russell Grant, a name we've come to associate with the TV astrologer Russell Grant. Perhaps mindful of this, the non-astrological Russell Grant would frequently use his full name, Russell Keith Grant, during his acting career, which included roles in Brazil, Cry Freedom and a fair amount of TV work. While I can find nothing on the current whereabouts of Jane Egan and Graham Pascoe, it seems Russell Keith Grant now works as a London Tour Guide, the Englisch Fur Anfänger gig presumably being a useful primer for his later career. I'm hardly in a position to say whether Englisch Fur Anfänger is an effective tool for learning English, but the fact that it was still being repeated on German television decades after it was made, and now has found another lease of life thanks to YouTube, would suggest it serves that purpose. Whether Jane and Russell's wacky odyssey through the English language would actually make foreigners want to step foot in the UK is a different matter. As someone who watched the 'At the Lost Property Office' episode with me put it "the Germans must think we're all crazy".

All 51 episodes of Englisch fur Anfänger are available on YouTube, if you're watching them purely for entertainment purposes though, you can tune out around the 10 minute mark. The remainder of the half hour episodes consisting of the 'lesson' part of the programme, conducted in German by the bilingual Mr. Pascoe.