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Television Review: Brodogradilište (Otpisani, S1X13, 1975)@drax143d

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Brodogradiište (S01E13)

Airdate: 16 March 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 44 minutes

If Dragan Marković, the nominal creator of Otpisani, had held absolute creative control, the iconic series would have concluded as a far bleaker, more orthodox chronicle of sacrifice. His initial conception was starkly fatalistic: each of the thirteen episodes would end with the death of a prominent member of the resistance cell, a relentless procession of martyrs to the cause. Two decades earlier, when Yugoslav cinema laboured under the rigid yoke of Socialist Realism and the cult of WW2 martyrdom, this didactic approach might have found its purpose. But by the mid-1970s, the series was broadcast to a vastly different audience—one weaned on Western genre entertainment, seeking action, humour, and narratives that subtly pandered to the anti-establishment mores of the post-war generation. Consequently, while several protagonists, especially in the latter episodes, indeed met their ends, the fate of the two most iconic characters, Prle and Tihi, was destined to diverge from Marković’s grim blueprint. The finale, Brodogradilište (“The Shipyard”), masterfully deals with this tension between a prescribed ideological purity and the populist demands of its era, ultimately cementing the series’ legacy not through a blood sacrifice, but through a defiant, battered survival.

The episode opens with a chilling resonance. Gestapo Major Krieger, who in the very first episode demanded the Communist cell be “written off,” now confidently informs his superior, Colonel Müller, that “the city has gone quiet” and that his quarry indeed are “written off.” This proclamation, brimming with grim finality, is not entirely unfounded. Prle and Tihi are the last remnants of the original crew. They have not only lost their comrades-in-arms but, in the devastating Gestapo raid on Uncle’s barge, their closest friends and loved ones. The weight of this isolation fuels their first act: a personal, ruthless settling of scores. Stalking Miro and Džokej, the fascist turncoats and former friends who participated in the raid, they execute them in cold blood on the street. This is not the dispassionate work of ideologues but the raw, vengeful fury of men with nothing left to lose, establishing a tone of profound personal despair that suffuses the entire episode.

Their vengeance, however, is merely a prelude to one final, strategic mission. Directed by their superior Skale, they are tasked with destroying the Belgrade shipyard—a vital German logistical hub—before leaving the city to join a Partisan detachment. The mission planning introduces one of the episode’s most compelling moral conflicts. Prle, employing his trademark audacity, poses as a worker to confront the shipyard’s manager, Engineer Milivoj Ristić (Miodrag Radovanović). Ristić is a patriot, yet he is appalled by the wanton destruction of his life’s work and the prospect of throwing thousands of workers into unemployment. Prle’s blunt rationale—that a functioning shipyard aids the enemy more than it protects the workers—forces a heartbreaking, reluctant capitulation. This scene elevates the narrative beyond simple partisan heroics, introducing a nuanced tragedy where patriotic duty catastrophically contradicts humanistic and professional conscience.

Before the fateful raid, the script allows a moment of poignant reflection. Prle and Tihi reminisce about lost comrades, a quiet interlude that underscores their profound loneliness. Simultaneously, a subtle thematic thread unfolds through the younger brother, Čibi. Tihi’s attempts to shield him from the brutal war are visibly failing; Čibi begins smoking and cursing, a transformation his girlfriend Milica finds shocking. The simple, devastating explanation offered—“he grew up during the war”—serves as a succinct epitaph for an entire generation, reminding the viewer that the collateral damage of resistance extends far beyond the battlefield.

Prle’s relentless pursuit of closure leads him to Pera Uvce (the excellent Miodrag Gavrilović), a sympathetically portrayed police agent and black-market partner. Uvce provides crucial intelligence: Krsta Mišić, chief of the Special Police, and Krieger himself will be at the shipyard for a security meeting on the very night of the operation. In a tragically misguided attempt to contribute, Uvce and Čibi stage an ambush to stop their cars. The operation ends in disaster; Čibi escapes, but Uvce is killed. This sequence is critical, fulfilling the episode’s promise of consequential loss and eliminating a beloved secondary character, thereby maintaining the high stakes and the sombre mood.

The raid itself is a masterclass in escalating tension and technical execution. The initial infiltration, with Prle and Tihi silently dispatching sentries to allow the explosives expert Kosinus to plant his charges, is executed with precise, tense efficiency. However, the discovery of a body triggers a chaotic reversal. Kosinus is gunned down, but his devices detonate, engulfing the shipyard in spectacular nighttime pyrotechnics that remain impressive even by modern standards. What follows is a relentless, exhausting chase sequence. Hunted by soldiers and search dogs through the industrial labyrinth, Prle is shot in the leg and Tihi suffers a head wound. The direction here is exceptional, emphasising their laboured breathing, their stumbling gait, and the terrifying proximity of the baying hounds. Their narrow escape—covering their trail, receiving hurried medical aid in a safehouse—feels earned and desperate, a far cry from triumphant heroics. The episode concludes not with a fanfare, but with the arrival of Žile in a German lorry to spirit them away, and the poignant, melancholic sound of Čibi playing the series’ end theme on his harmonica.

Brodogradilište is not the series’ best episode, nor is it a perfect finale. Its plot mechanics are at times contingent, and the moral complexity introduced with Engineer Ristić is somewhat abandoned in the subsequent explosion. Yet, it functions superlatively within the series’ arc. The generally dark tone, established from Krieger’s opening boast, is sustained throughout. Ominous foreshadowing—Prle’s visit to his mother, Uvce’s tender family moments—casts a pall over the narrative, confirming that in this war, survival is the exception, not the rule. The final action sequence is brilliantly directed, featuring gritty stunt work and a palpable sense of visceral peril that makes the protagonists’ survival feel less like a guarantee and more like a miracle.

Ultimately, the producers’ most astute decision was the dual survival—not only of the protagonists but of the primary antagonists as well. Before the end of initial airing, it was abundantly clear that the audience’s affinity for the charismatic, roguish Prle and the stoic, lethal Tihi was unparalleled. To kill them would have been a narrative betrayal of the relationship the series had forged with its viewers. The sequel—the 1976 feature film Povratak otpisanih and the 1978 eponymous series—was already an inevitability. Thus, both the efficient Mišić and the cunning, increasingly nuanced Krieger had to live to resume their roles as worthy adversaries. Krieger’s trajectory in this episode is particularly telling; for once, he is allowed a moment of triumphant, almost leisurely confidence, even indulging in a romantic subplot with his secretary Elsa (Slavica Stefanović), humanising him just enough to make him a more enduring foe.

Brodogradilište succeeds precisely because it subverts its creator’s initial, austere vision. It delivers the required action and sacrifice—Kosinus and Uvce are added to the long roster of the “written off”—but it recognises that the cultural moment demanded icons, not just martyrs. It provides a finale that is tense, emotionally resonant, and technically accomplished, while leaving the door decisively ajar for the future adventures that the Yugoslav public craved. It is a finale that understands its audience, offering a battered, bloody, but ultimately hopeful conclusion that ensured Prle and Tihi would live to fight another day, both on screen and in the popular imagination.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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›Television Review: Ranjenici (Otpisani, S1X12, 1975)@drax146d

Ranjenici (S01E12)

Airdate: 9 March 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 40 minutes

Hollywood action cinema has taught countless generations that guerilla warfare is the most exciting and entertaining form of warfare; the dashing commando, the improvised explosive, the heart-pounding ambush. Yet, one of the less shown or profoundly appreciated aspects of being a partisan is the grinding, terrifying reality of being deprived of the logistics and medical care conventional armies take for granted. A stark and potent reminder of this forms the crippling heart of Ranjenici (“The Wounded”), the penultimate episode of the cult Yugoslav television series Otpisani. This instalment stands as one of the most iconic and brutally effective examples of the Partisan film genre, precisely because it swaps exhilarating heroics for a suffocating, granular examination of desperation, attrition, and the crushing personal cost of resistance.

The episode begins with a cold open that reintroduces Milan, once the top resistance operative in Belgrade, now commanding a small band of Partisans in the countryside. They conduct a raid on a railway station to plant explosives on a German troop transport. The operation is a tactical success—the train spectacularly explodes—but it comes at a price. A firefight leaves several Partisans wounded, with Milan most gravely injured of all. His second-in-command, Cvika (Slobodan Novaković), makes the reluctant but necessary decision to send him across the river to Belgrade for urgent medical attention. This task falls to his former subordinates, the last remaining members of the original cell still operating in the city: Prle and Tihi.

In Belgrade, the operational machinery grinds into motion with a tense, procedural realism. Prle and Tihi learn that the barge they share with their avuncular landlord, simply called Uncle, will be used for the river crossing. In a moment of profound, unspoken trust, Uncle reveals he has known of their clandestine activities all along and chosen to remain silent; he will personally pilot the boat. During the day, the duo split their duties. Prle recruits Žile (Ljubomir Ubavkić), a car mechanic, to provide post-extraction transportation via a stolen German lorry. Tihi, meanwhile, ventures to the hospital to recruit a sympathetic physician. It is here that the episode’s meticulously constructed house of cards begins to tremble. Tihi’s arrival is noticed by Klara, a young woman from their social circle. In a fatal lapse of judgement, she later mentions this sighting to her friends, the fervently fascistic Miro and Džokej. The two young men, seizing an opportunity for glory, personally report Tihi to Gestapo Major Krieger. Krieger, impressed by their initiative, incorporates them into a planned raid on the barge at midnight. Hours before the operation, at a party where Major and Džokej boast of their impending triumph, a horrified Klara realises the consequence of her gossip and slips away to warn her friends.

The convergence at the riverside barge creates mounting tension. The wounded have arrived, and the doctor begins treatment, even as the secrecy is further compromised by the unexpected arrival of Čibi and his girlfriend Milica. Prle, in a moment of stark pragmatism, allows them inside; the cat is out of the bag, and extra hands are needed. Žile arrives with the lorry, and finally, a breathless Klara delivers her warning. The group scrambles to evacuate. They successfully manoeuvre Milan and the other wounded Partisans to the lorry, but the engine, in a cruel twist of fate, refuses to start. The ensuing sequence is a chaotic, tragic fight. Krieger’s Gestapo agents, accompanied by the eager Miro and Džokej, storm the premises. A fierce firefight erupts, killing several Germans, but the Partisans pay a harrowing price. Uncle is gunned down. Klara, in a moment of gut-wrenching irony, is accidentally shot and killed by Miro’s bullet. As the lorry’s engine finally roars to life and the survivors escape, Tihi is left to stare at the bodies of his beloved uncle and former schoolmate—a devastating tableau of personal loss.

Despite its opening, which delivers a classic, gung-ho action scene, Ranjenici is arguably the darkest episode of the series to this point. Its overarching theme is an oppressive, all-consuming sense of loss. Prle and Tihi operate under a grim, unspoken understanding: with so many of their comrades already dead, the laws of probability and statistics are now their most formidable enemy. Unbeknownst to them, the walls are closing in with terrifying speed. Krieger, thanks to Tihi’s own fascist schoolmates, now has Prle and Tihi not merely as abstract targets, but as men whose faces, haunts, and methods he is beginning to personally comprehend. This existential dread is masterfully underlined in a heartbreaking scene where Milan, delirious from his wounds, fails to recognise Tihi and instead feverishly inquires after Zriki, Mile, and Paja—ghosts from seasons past, a litany of the fallen.

For Tihi, this episode transforms statistical loss into acutely personal agony. He loses not just another comrade, but a beloved familial figure in Uncle, and witnesses the death of a well-meaning friend in Klara. Furthermore, the lives of Čibi and Milica, now irrevocably entangled, hang in a precarious balance.

The only fleeting moment of levity comes courtesy of Ljubomir Ubavkić’s Žile. Ubavkić, a superb character actor, is brilliantly effective, his playful banter with Prle and his cheerful interactions with unsuspecting German soldiers providing a necessary, humanising respite from the enveloping gloom. Equally notable is Dragomir Felba, one of the great pillars of Serbian and Yugoslav cinema, who delivers a poignant, understated performance in one of his character’s final appearances, lending Uncle a dignity and quiet courage that makes his fate all the more affecting.

From a critical standpoint, the episode is not without minor flaws. The series recycles the explosion footage from the previous episode, Poštar, though only the most nitpicking viewer would lodge a serious complaint given the budgetary constraints of television production at the time. A more valid criticism lies in the climax’s blend of frantic gunfire and high melodrama, which, by modern standards, edges slightly toward the clichéd. However, this is a minor quibble in an otherwise tightly constructed narrative.

Ultimately, Ranjenici serves its core purpose with ruthless efficiency: it sets the stage for the series finale by stripping away any remaining illusion of glamour. It forces both the characters and the audience to stare, unflinchingly, at the bloody arithmetic of resistance. The episode concludes not with a triumphant escape, but with Tihi’s silent, shell-shocked gaze upon the dead—a moment of pure, undiluted tragedy. By this point, the stage is set for a finale that promises not a triumphant victory, but a very dark and profoundly human conclusion, making Ranjenici a crucial, devastating pivot in the saga of Otpisani.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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›Television Review: Provala (Otpisani, S1X11, 1975)@drax147d

Provala (S01E11)

Airdate: 2 March 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 42 minutes

Contrary to the enduring popular perception of Otpisani as a purely romanticised, action-adventure series, the show was, from its inception, deeply rooted in the brutal reality of Belgrade under Nazi occupation. Its nominal creator, Dragan Marković, was himself a resistance veteran, and a fundamental motivation behind his work was to pay a proper, cinematic homage to his fallen comrades. This approach, however, was more pronounced and firmly anchored in documented events during the early episodes. As the series progressed, the narrative often leaned into broader, more archetypal resistance heroics. One of the rare later episodes to return explicitly to this foundation in historical fact is the eleventh instalment, Provala ("Breach"). This episode is a taut, politically charged spy thriller that draws direct inspiration from a devastating, real-life intelligence catastrophe within the Communist underground.

The title Provala succinctly encapsulates the episode’s core drama: the catastrophic uncovering, or "breach," of the Communist resistance organisation by the German occupiers and their collaborationist auxiliaries. The plot begins with a cold, efficient open in the offices of the Special Police, immediately establishing a tone of institutionalised brutality. Its chief, Krsta Mišić, interrogates a silent man (Dragan Obradović). Confident in the "direct and physical" methods of his subordinates Gojko and Limar, Mišić departs with a faint smile as screams emanate from behind the closed door. This brief scene masterfully establishes the omnipresent threat of betrayal and torture, the ever-looming risk that defined life for the resistance. The narrative then pivots to the heart of the breach: Slavko, a young clerk within the Special Police itself. Unhappy over his father’s fate as a prisoner of war following the 1941 invasion, Slavko has become a double agent. His method—photographing top-secret documents with a miniature camera—fails at a critical moment, forcing him to manually type a copy, a fateful decision that becomes the plot’s tragic hinge.

While Slavko performs his high-stakes duplicity, the consequences of the initial interrogation unfold. Gojko and Limar succeed, extracting from their broken prisoner the identity of his contact: the Sculptor. The Sculptor’s arrest triggers Slavko’s decision to go into hiding, leading him to the same safe house as Prle and Tihi, who are themselves lying low, acutely aware that they are conspicuous as the last survivors of their original cell. This convergence of narratives is cleverly handled. Prle and Tihi, the series’ icons, are deliberately sidelined for much of the episode’s central thriller mechanics, their presence serving primarily to maintain serial continuity. A subplot involving their chance encounter with former gymnasium classmates—Klara (Slobodanka Žugić), the colaborationist militiaman Miro (Aleksandar Hrnjaković), and the ex-ZBOR fascist Džokej (Branko Cvejić)—provides both levity and a different kind of menace. Their drunken reminiscence curdles into suspicion, setting in motion a strand of personal betrayal that will extend beyond this episode. It is a reminder that in occupied Belgrade, danger lurked not only in police headquarters but in chance meetings and old grudges.

The episode’s climax is a great example of mounting tension and futility. Against his better judgement, Slavko ventures to the river port to use his police credentials to safeguard the arrival of a high-ranking Partisan envoy from Zagreb. Prle and Tihi shadow him, a silent backup. Meanwhile, the breach widens. The Sculptor dies under torture without talking, but in his pocket, Mišić finds the typed copy of his own document. The realisation that he has a mole triggers a forensic investigation. The examination of typewriters leads inexorably to Slavko’s office, and the order for his arrest is issued. The ensuing port sequence is directed by Aleksandar Đorđević with a keen eye for action and spatial urgency. Slavko completes his mission, enabling the Zagreb envoy to escape, but is cornered. In a desperate, chaotic chase, Prle and Tihi attempt to intervene, but their efforts are uncharacteristically clumsy and ineffective. Slavko is gunned down, a lone, heroic sacrifice amidst the broader organisational collapse. His death is far more cinematically dramatic than the historical reality it references, including a firefight that dispatches two "redshirt" Special Police agents to somewhat balance the moral ledgers.

This dramatisation points to the fascinating and complex historical truth underpinning Provala. The character of Slavko is directly based on Janko Janković (1909–1944), a clerk who rose within the Special Police, becoming a close friend to Boško Bećarević, head of its Anti-Communist Section, all while acting as a Communist mole. Janković’s career, which saved hundreds of lives, ended in October 1943. The cause was the arrest of Vera Miletić (1920–1944), the newly appointed head of the Belgrade Communist Party organisation. Official post-war histories state that under torture, she gave up her contacts, including Janković. Both were executed before Belgrade's liberation. Miletić’s story adds a profound, later historical resonance: a year before her arrest, she gave birth to Mira Marković, who would become the influential wife of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević. Miletić’s role in the 1943 disaster was a subject of deep controversy within the Party—Tito himself blamed her for the debacle in 1948—and her legacy was a political football during the Milošević era. In the 1970s, this episode remained a profound embarrassment, which explains the serial’s need to fictionalise and dramatise the details, transforming a sordid betrayal and quiet arrest into a heroic last stand.

Đorđević’s direction shines in Provala, leveraging his penchant for genre cinema to craft an episode that functions as an efficient, stand-alone spy thriller. The pacing is brisk, the surveillance sequences are tense, and the final chase delivers a raw, kinetic energy. The script also wisely provides moments of levity to counterbalance the grim central plot, primarily through Čibi, Tihi’s younger brother. His romantic fumbling with neighbour Milica and his hilariously botched attempt to destroy a German lorry with a stick grenade—which fails because he doesn’t know how to activate it—offer a necessary human counterpoint. It is a reminder of the amateurish, improvisational nature of much resistance activity, a contrast to the professionalised peril of Slavko’s world.

In the end, Provala is a significant episode precisely because it re-engages with the historical veracity that initially inspired the series. It transcends being merely another adventure for the beloved protagonists, instead presenting a sobering examination of compromise, sacrifice, and the brutal efficiency of a police state. By centring the story on Slavko/Janković and weaving in the fraught legacy of Vera Miletić, it taps into a deeper, more ambiguous vein of Yugoslav history. The episode succeeds as a gripping thriller, but its enduring power lies in its shadow—the knowledge that this fiction is a polished reflection of a real and deeply painful provala, a breach whose consequences echoed through decades of political memory. It is Otpisani at its most ambitious: not just celebrating resistance, but dissecting its vulnerabilities and honouring the forgotten individuals who operated in the deepest shadows, where a single typed page could mean the difference between life and death for hundreds.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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›Television Review: Vlada Rus (Otpisani, S1X10, 1975)@drax153d

Vlada Rus (S01E10)

Airdate: 23 February 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 42 minutes

Otpisani has long occupied a curious space in Yugoslav television history, frequently dismissed either as escapist wartime melodrama or, in the post-Communist era, as historical fabrication devoid of authentic connection to the brutal realities of Nazi-occupied Belgrade. Such critiques, whilst not entirely baseless, fundamentally misjudge the series' original 1974/75 black-and-white incarnation. Beneath its adventure-serial veneer lay a stark, often unflinching portrayal of occupation's grim calculus—one that grew progressively bleaker as the narrative unfolded. The ninth instalment, Paja Bakšiš, had already shattered audience complacency by sacrificing its beloved titular character, but it was the tenth episode, Vlada Rus, that plunged Otpisani into its darkest territory yet. Here, the series abandoned any lingering pretence of heroic romance, exposing the resistance movement as a grinding machine that consumed its own with ruthless efficiency.

The episode functions as an immediate sequel to Paja Bakšiš, its entire emotional architecture built upon the wreckage of that preceding tragedy. Paja's self-sacrifice—allowing Prle and Tihi to escape with crucial intelligence regarding German security protocols—casts a pall over every subsequent action. The script, to its credit, refuses to let this loss dissipate into mere narrative convenience. Tihi, typically the measured strategist, simmers with barely suppressed fury, whilst Prle, whose wisecracking persona has long defined his character, transforms into something far more volatile. His outburst against superior officers Skale and Stevan crackles with genuine grief, a moment that permits Dragan Nikolić to demonstrate dramatic range far exceeding his established action-hero credentials. This psychological grounding lends weight to the central mission: a major sabotage operation against German armoured vehicles parked in the city, the very objective for which Paja surrendered his life. The imperative is clear—his death must not be rendered meaningless.

Yet the practical execution of this plan immediately reveals the resistance's threadbare resources. Prle and Tihi's inventory reveals a crippling deficit: insufficient weaponry and, more critically, a dire shortage of explosives. Engineer Babić's perilous sortie from the German base initially yields detonators and charges, but his fatal error—accidentally triggering the warehouse upon a second retrieval—epitomises the episode's emerging theme of senseless waste. Here is a technical expert, a man whose skills should guarantee meticulous precision, undone by a moment of catastrophic misjudgement. His death serves no grand purpose; it is simply the cost of operational desperation. This pattern of futility soon becomes Vlada Rus's defining characteristic.

Parallel to the sabotage plot runs Vlada Rus's increasingly dangerous liaison with Ruth Müller, daughter of Colonel Müller. Their romance—conducted through ballet visits and clandestine meetings—provides the episode's ostensible human interest, yet these sequences feel conspicuously hollow. Major Krieger's jealousy, manifested through the clandestine surveillance of his subordinate Dienst (Božidar Pavićević), introduces a subplot that ultimately leads nowhere. Colonel Müller's subsequent rebuke of Krieger for "mixing personal and official business" registers as narrative throat-clearing, a moment of bureaucratic colour that fails to develop into substantive conflict. More valuable is the intelligence Vlada gleans about Captain Bauer (Miroslav Bijelić), the Gestapo officer responsible for the armoury's security, whose weakness for female companionship—this time with a Volksdeutsche woman (Melita Bihali)—creates the operational window the resistance requires. This information, however, comes at the cost of screen time devoted to Vlada and Ruth's relationship, which never transcends perfunctory filler.

The raid itself unfolds with methodical tension. Prle, Tihi, Stevan, Sirano, and Kosinus constitute the assault team, whilst Dragana assumes lookout duties on a nearby street, explicitly instructed by Tihi to flee after issuing any warning. The capture of Bauer and his lover in flagranti provides a moment of grim satisfaction, their humiliation a small victory before the inevitable catastrophe. Prle's systematic elimination of sentries clears the path for Sirano and Kosinus to plant explosives beneath the German vehicles. For a brief moment, success appears attainable.

Fate, however, intervenes through the banal caprice of Major Krieger. Driven apparently by little more than boredom and foreknowledge of Bauer's libidinous habits, he decides upon an impromptu inspection. This arbitrary decision—neither strategically motivated nor dramatically earned—initiates the episode's catastrophic final act. Vlada Rus, learning of Krieger's movement through Gestapo headquarters, comprehends the danger and races to intercept, his lone assault on Krieger's vehicle a desperate attempt to preserve the saboteurs' escape route. The gunfire achieves its immediate purpose, alerting the guards and forcing the resistance fighters into a frantic retreat, but at devastating cost.

The ensuing chaos claims Sirano and Stevan, their deaths occurring in the confused scramble for extraction. The explosives detonate, fulfilling the mission's objective, yet the victory feels pyrrhic in the extreme. Vlada Rus manages to kill one Gestapo officer and wound Krieger, but his own survival becomes secondary when Dragana, defying Tihi's explicit orders, joins the fray with a hand grenade. Her disobedience—whilst courageously intended—proves instantly fatal; she is cut down by Dienst. Vlada's attempt to rescue her results in his own death, a final, futile gesture that underscores the episode's nihilistic turn. The resistance has succeeded tactically whilst failing catastrophically strategically, losing five operatives where previously it had lost none.

The shock of Paja's death in the preceding episode had prepared audiences for narrative boldness, but Vlada Rus escalates the body count to a degree that borders on the gratuitous. Engineer Milić's accidental demise, Vlada Rus's quixotic last stand, and Dragana's pointless sacrifice collectively suggest a script more interested in punishing its characters than illuminating their struggle. The deaths feel particularly egregious because they are so often stupid and needless—Milić's expertise should have prevented his error; Vlada's supposedly James Bond-esque skills as a double agent are squandered in a one-man assault against numerically superior forces; Dragana's fate violates both tactical sense and character logic. The latter creates an additional continuity problem, as actress Zlata Numanagić would later appear in the 1976 sequel Povratak otpisanih in a different role, a casting decision that inadvertently trivialises her character's sacrifice here.

Compounding these narrative missteps are the poorly directed romantic interludes between Ruth and Vlada, which play like contractual obligations rather than integral story elements. Their scenes extend the running time without deepening character or advancing plot, and with Vlada's demise, the entire subplot becomes retrospectively redundant. One might argue it was always thus. Technically, the episode further stumbles with its reliance on obviously recycled explosion footage from the earlier episode Garaža, a budgetary constraint that shatters immersion at the very moment of climax.

Vlada Rus is as a solidly acted but fundamentally flawed instalment of Otpisani. The performances—particularly Nikolić's dramatic turn and the supporting cast's committed work—cannot compensate for a script that mistakes bleakness for profundity and body count for dramatic weight. The episode's grim fidelity to the realities of occupied Belgrade, whilst admirable in intent, manifests as a series of increasingly arbitrary deaths that ultimately undermine the resistance's credibility. It is unlikely to rank among the series' most popular or memorable moments, remembered instead as the point where Otpisani's darkness tipped from atmospheric into oppressive, sacrificing character and sense for the sake of unrelenting fatalism.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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›Television Review: Paja Bakšiš (Otpisani, S1X09, 1975)@drax154d

Paja Bakšiš (S01E09)

Airdate: 16 February 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 42 minutes

From its premiere, the acclaimed Yugoslav TV series Otpisani (The Written-Off Men) has danced on a precarious line between patriotic myth-making and historical drama. Critics have long noted its tendency to stray from the meticulous record of Belgrade’s brutal World War II occupation, opting instead for a stylised, action-oriented narrative where the charismatic resistance cell—led by the unflappable Tihi—seems to operate with near-superhuman efficacy. The show often indulges in the fantasy of the “Good Guys” winning every skirmish, dispatching entire squads of German soldiers with relative ease while their opponents exhibit the infamously poor marksmanship later sarcastically ascribed to Imperial Stormtroopers. Yet, beneath this Boy’s Own adventure veneer, the series never shied away from portraying a darker, grittier reality: the omnipresent threat of torture, mass executions, and the shadow of the Holocaust. It is as if the creators, perhaps hearing these very criticisms, decided to lean decisively into this grim authenticity for their later episodes. The ninth episode, Paja Bakšiš, stands as a stark testament to this shift, enforcing the ruthless rules of probability by delivering a devastating blow to the core ensemble. In doing so, it elevates the series from thrilling propaganda to genuinely poignant tragedy, centred on the fate of its title character.

Paja, nicknamed “Bakšiš” (The Tip), was introduced in the first episode as one of Tihi’s four original best friends. A wisecracking waiter, his value lay not in frontline combat but in his unique niche: a master of intelligence gathering with an indispensable network of black-market contacts capable of procuring German uniforms and equipment. By this penultimate stage, the group has already been whittled down by war’s attrition. Zriki and Mile have been killed, leaving only Prle relatively unscathed and Paja himself, who has miraculously survived being wounded in two previous episodes. His survival begins to feel less like luck and more like a narrative debt coming due, his cheerful resilience marking him for a cruel, sacrificial payoff.

The plot is a classic espionage set-up. Tihi is briefed by his superior, Stevan, about an audacious plan to steal German security plans. The source is the enigmatic Vladimir “Vlada Rus,” played with suave, James Bond-like coolness by Mihailo Janketić. As the son of a Russian émigré working for the Gestapo, Vlada has access to a high-society party at Colonel Müller’s villa. This party provides the perfect diversion for Tihi, Prle, and Paja—aided by safecracker Sirano (“Cyrano”)—to infiltrate the villa, crack Müller’s safe, and photograph the documents. The episode expertly builds tension during the waiting period in Sirano’s parents’ nearby villa. The mood is surprisingly light, filled with Metaxa liquor and camaraderie, heightened by Paja’s buoyant spirits as he celebrates his birthday. This poignant detail, a man celebrating life on the eve of his death, adds a layer of tragic irony that the series had previously reserved for its more anonymous victims. Paja’s competence is immediately shown as he dons a German uniform to efficiently silence a sentry, but this professional success only deepens the impending sense of loss.

Meanwhile, the party at the Müller villa introduces a compelling romantic and social rivalry. Müller’s beautiful daughter, Ruth (a radiant Neda Arnerić, her lines dubbed due to linguistic limitations), becomes the object of desire for both the smarmy Major Krieger and the more refined Vlada Rus. Krieger’s simmering jealousy is fuelled by racial disdain, as Ruth favours a “subhuman” Slav. This subplot adds necessary texture to the German antagonists, moving them beyond mere caricatures. Vlada Rus uses the occasion to momentarily kill the villa’s power, forcing an impromptu candlelit piano performance from Ruth. This elegant interlude is not merely decorative; it provides the acoustic cover for the infiltration, masterfully intertwining the social and suspense threads of the narrative.

The heist itself is executed with palpable tension. Tihi studies the documents with meticulous care, but the team overstays its welcome. Upon the power’s restoration, they are discovered. A chaotic escape ensues. Prle and Sirano find temporary refuge in Sirano’s house, where Sirano hides a bullet graze and, in a tense scene, outsmarts the suspicious Major Krieger during a search by concealing Prle in a wine cellar. Tihi and Paja, however, are forced onto the streets, pursued by soldiers and dogs. In the episode’s pivotal moment, recognising that Tihi—the sole bearer of the vital intelligence—must escape, Paja makes the conscious, heroic decision to sacrifice himself. “Run, Tihi! You’re the only one who knows the plans!” he shouts, turning to face the onslaught. Cornered in a ruined building, the wisecracking waiter, the man of contacts and clever schemes, meets his end in a brutal, unglamorous shootout. This death is arguably the most emotionally resonant moment in the entire series. It is also the surprisingly early exit of Miki Manojlović, an actor whose nuanced performance hinted at the major career that would follow in Serbian and European cinema.

Beyond its personal tragedy, Paja Bakšiš functions superbly as a bona fide spy thriller. The sequences of infiltration, the race against time at the safe, and the frantic chase are orchestrated with a precision that rivals any contemporary genre work. The melodramatic elements—the birthday, the sacrificial act—are earned by the episode’s airtight suspense mechanics.

Furthermore, the episode’s subversive historical commentary is potent. The brief respite in Sirano’s opulent villa allows Prle, a man from the working class, to remark with bitter humour on the luxuries around him, including the coveted Metaxa. He jokes that once the Communists win, all this will be nationalised and “enjoyed by the people.” This line, delivered lightly, carries a devastating weight for the 1970s Yugoslav audience. It was a darkly prophetic nod to the post-war expropriations and the deep-seated resentment they bred among Belgrade’s decimated middle and upper classes towards the very Partisan victors the series ostensibly celebrates. It is a moment of startling ideological complexity, acknowledging that the “liberation” came with its own cost and contradictions.

In conclusion, Paja Bakšiš represents Otpisani at its most mature and effective. It retains the series’ kinetic energy and patriotic core but tempers it with a newfound commitment to consequence. By sacrificing one of its most beloved original characters in a move dictated by narrative probability rather than heroic necessity, the episode shatters any remaining illusion of invulnerability. It complements this personal loss with sophisticated thriller plotting and daring, subtextual political commentary. The episode is elevated by strong performances, particularly Manojlović’s farewell turn and Janketić’s charismatic introduction—ironically prefiguring his next major role as the Krieger-like villain, Colonel Tomić of Ustasha secret police in Nepokoreni grad. Paja Bakšiš proves that the most powerful war stories are not those where the heroes always win, but those where their victories are inseparable from profound, personal loss. It is the episode where Otpisani truly grew up, trading mere adventure for authentic, enduring tragedy.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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›Television Review: Poštar (Otpisani, S1X08, 1975)@drax159d

Poštar (S01E08)

Airdate: 9 February 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 48 minutes

The 1970s American sitcom Happy Days is famous, among other things, for introducing phrases like “jumping the shark” and “Fonzie Syndrome” into the global lexicon. While the former is often applied subjectively, referring to a perceived, irreversible decline in a show’s quality, the latter is a more objective narrative phenomenon. It describes the moment a show’s charismatic side character so thoroughly eclipses the intended protagonists that the narrative machinery must be recalibrated around them. This syndrome can be applied retroactively, even to series that, on first glance, share nothing with the sunny milkshake bars of 1950s Milwaukee. A prime example is found in Otpisani (“The Written-Off Ones”), the Yugoslav cult television series that preceded Happy Days by two years. Its eighth episode, Poštar (“The Postman”), features perhaps the most definitive and impactful example of Fonzie Syndrome in the history of Yugoslav television, centred on the glorious, grumpy, and ultimately heroic figure of Jovan “Joca” Perić.

The plot begins with the resistance group de facto leader, Tihi (Dragan Nikolić), arriving at the studio of a Party sculptor (Predrag Ćeramilac) to receive orders. The assignment delivered is the riskiest yet: to blow up a German military transport train carrying troops and materiel from Athens to the Eastern Front. The episode immediately establishes the mission’s daunting scale. Tihi’s trademark quiet frustration is palpable as he begins logistical work. This involves leveraging his acquaintance Dragana (Zlata Numanagić) to glean schedule information from her station manager uncle (Milan Puzić), and commissioning the mechanically brilliant Kosinus (Srboljub Milin) to construct a complex timer for the bomb. The explosives are secured by Prle (Vojislav Brajović) with help from the engineer Babić. The plan is sophisticated, multi-faceted, and entirely logical—a hallmark of Otpisani’s writing, which treats sabotage as a complex engineering and social puzzle rather than mere impulsive heroics.

The insoluble problem remains access to the heavily guarded station. The solution arrives from Prle’s neighbour: Joca Perić (Pavle Vuisić), a middle-aged postman. In beautifully observed scenes with his wife Lenče (Vera Dedić), Joca is established as a Serbian patriot, deeply resentful of the occupation, yet feeling profoundly emasculated. His capture and swift release by the Germans during April 1941 invasion (due to a need for postal staff) is a personal humiliation he wears like a hair shirt. Prle expertly manipulates this wounded pride, recruiting Joca by appealing to his patriotism and offering a chance at redemption. Joca’s integration is the episode’s masterstroke; he is not a born partisan, but an ordinary, flawed man pushed into extraordinary circumstances.

The infiltration, using post office uniforms under Joca’s authority, is a masterpiece of suspense. Even under the personal scrutiny of the formidable Major Krieger, they reach the train. The tension skyrockets when the station manager orders Joca to personally guard the mail wagon with a German soldier. Faced with almost certain death, Tihi suggests aborting. In a defining moment, Joca refuses. This is not the fearless courage of a veteran, but the stubborn, prideful decision of a man who has already backed down once in his own mind and will not do so again. The ensuing sequence, with Paja (Miki Manojlović) creating a diversion, the subduing of the German guard, and Kosinus taking his place, is executed with crisp, nerve-wracking precision. The final image of Joca and Kosinus leaping from the wagon and watching the distant, spectacular explosion is both cathartic and strangely intimate.

Poštar is an exceptionally strong episode precisely because it features surprisingly little action until its pyrotechnic finale—arguably the series’ most impressive, implying a staggering German body count. This scarcity is compensated for by a deep, intelligent suspense derived from procedural detail. The episode is a meticulous “how-to” manual for impossible sabotage, celebrating collective, specialised effort.

Another fascinating layer is its persistent levity, which never undermines the stakes. A darkly humorous thread involves Prle’s defence of his visit to a prostitute as a necessary “release” to steady his nerves for the mission—a moment of raw, pragmatic humanity that scandalises the more austere Tihi and Paja. Similarly, sexual banter between Paja and Joca, often centred on Joca’s perceived inadequacies, adds a layer of earthy, masculine humour that grounds the characters.

Ultimately, the episode belongs to Pavle Vuisić. A legend of Yugoslav cinema famed for his ad-libs, Vuisić imbues Joca with a glorious, contradictory humanity. He is all snarky comments and wounded pride, a man whose bravado masks deep insecurity, yet who proves capable of thinking on his feet and doing the right thing for reasons both patriotic and deeply personal. The audience’s connection with him is immediate and total. His journey from comic-relief neighbour to crucial, brave operative is so compelling that it fundamentally altered the franchise’s trajectory. Such was Joca’s seismic popularity that the producers of the 1976 film Povratak otpisanih (“The Return of the Written-Off Ones”) and the 1978 sequel series felt compelled to bring him backas the unequivocal protagonist. In doing so, they formalised what Poštar so brilliantly revealed: the show’s magnetic centre had shifted. The “Fonzie” had arrived, and the narrative would never be the same again. Vuisić’s Joca Perić thus stands not only as one of Yugoslav television’s greatest characters, but as a textbook case of how a powerful performance can rewrite a series’ destiny from within a single, perfectly constructed episode.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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›Television Review: Banjički logor (Otpisani, S1X07, 1975)@drax161d

Banjički logor (S01E07)

Airdate: 2 February 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 48 minutes

TThe sixth episode of Otpisani, Kanal, despite being a partial rehash of motives from the earlier Garaža, proved to be extremely effective and arguably the series' peak so far through its claustrophobic tension and ruthless pacing. The seventh episode, Banjički logor (“Banjica Camp”), attempts a similar feat by returning to the audacious rescue premise of the very first episode, Bolnica. However, this rehash is executed with significantly less success, resulting in an instalment that, while competently made and entertaining, feels notably conventional and historically sanitised compared to its predecessors.

The title refers to the very real Banjica Concentration Camp, established by the German occupation authorities in Belgrade in July 1941 and run jointly with the Serbian collaborationist administration until October 1944. Official records state that 23,697 individuals were detained there, with at least 3,489 executed. The camp’s ominous presence has loomed in the background of the series, most directly in the previous episode Izdajnik, where Tihi’s girlfriend Nina is brought to see her tortured stepfather within its walls. This episode finally places the camp itself at the narrative centre. The plot involves Tihi receiving orders to rescue two high-ranking prisoners from Banjica. To accomplish this, he, Prle, and Paja recruit three new young activists: Uroš (Mladen Nedeljković), Moma (Predrag Panić), and another youth named Moma (Fedor Popov). Their operation begins with securing a safe house for reconnaissance, where Tihi and Prle note a crucial five-minute window during the changing of the gate guard, when only a single soldier remains on duty.

The acquisition of equipment for the raid provides some of the episode’s more engaging sequences. In a cleverly staged scene, Paja returns to his former workplace to lead an ambush on a group of German soldiers enjoying a meal, forcing them to surrender their submachine guns. The following day, Paja, Prle, and Tihi infiltrate a bathhouse frequented by German military personnel to steal SS uniforms, demonstrating the series’ continued strength in depicting improvised, bold partisan tactics. Parallel to the main plot, the character development continues, particularly for Čibi, who grows increasingly restless over his exclusion from resistance actions by his protective older brother Tihi. A light-hearted moment sees Čibi and Prle run into their acquaintance Srba (Danilo Lazović) and his girlfriend, with Čibi’s cheeky commentary on her looks amusing Prle. Čibi is also shown developing a nascent romantic interest in his neighbour’s daughter, Milica (Zorica Mirković).

Srba’s subplot, however, takes a tragic and historically grounded turn. He works in a clockwork repair shop owned by a Volksdeutsche German, Hans Schmidt (played by Eugen Verber), who constantly gloats about the seemingly unstoppable advances of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in the autumn of 1941. Srba defiantly expresses scepticism towards these German prospects and is subsequently reported to the Gestapo. In a powerful scene, he is interrogated by Major Krieger himself and, with even greater defiance, confirms his views, thereby sealing his fate. This narrative strand is surprisingly based on the real-life story of Aleksandar Ignjatović (1915–1941), a young clockmaker reported by his Volksdeutsche employer for publicly doubting German military success and later defiantly confessing the same to his interrogators before execution.

The climactic raid unfolds with precision. Dressed in stolen SS uniforms, Prle and Tihi incapacitate the Serbian collaborationist guard at the camp gates. Simultaneously, a group of prisoners in a cell—including Srba, now bearing signs of beating—overpower their guard and make a break for the open gate. When guards attempt to stop the fleeing prisoners, Srba heroically stays behind to cover their retreat with a stolen gun, sacrificing his life. The escapees reach the gate, where their retreat is covered by Uroš, Moma, and Paja, the latter being wounded in the shoulder. Paja is taken to Moma’s home, where Moma’s mother (Živka Matić) reluctantly hides them in the attic as the Special Police and gendarmes conduct house-to-house searches. In a semi-humorous twist that plays on series continuity, the gendarme ordered to search the attic is the same one overpowered by the militants during the hospital raid in the first episode; unwilling to risk another injury, he neglects to check and reports the attic clear.

Directorially, Banjički logor is a well-constructed episode that provides a solid combination of action and humour, culminating in this unexpected but fitting twist. One of the episode’s great ironies lies in the casting of Eugen Verber, a Serbian Jewish historian, writer, and translator, in the role of the Volksdeutsche German, Hans Schmidt. Although Verber’s own family perished in the Holocaust, he specialised in playing German and Nazi roles throughout his acting career due to his excellent command of the language. He would later reappear in the sequel series Povratak otpisanih as Schroeder, a German officer.

Despite its strengths, the episode is marred by a strangely disjointed ending featuring a chronologically disordered recap of its most notable moments. This gives the distinct impression of a “filler” segment, serving no narrative purpose other than to fulfil a running time quota.

More significantly, the episode’s historical authenticity leaves much to be desired. While there were two high-profile successful escapes from Banjica Camp, they occurred in 1943, not 1941. The real details were considered inconvenient for the Communist Yugoslav government at the time of the series’ airing. One escapee was Milka Minić, a Communist activist and wife of Miloš Minić, who was the Yugoslav Foreign Secretary during the 1970s. The other escape involved several high-ranking officers of the JVUO (Chetniks), the rival monarchist resistance movement that the Communists regarded as bitter enemies. The series’ version, a 1941 raid led by our protagonists, thus represents a significant fictionalisation that appropriates and simplifies complex history for a streamlined partisan narrative.

Banjički logor is a professionally executed but ultimately safe entry in the Otpisani series. It successfully delivers action and continues to develop its charismatic ensemble cast, yet it fails to recapture the raw innovation or dramatic heft of episodes like Kanal or Bolnica. Its retreat into a more conventional heroic rescue plot, coupled with a sanitised approach to inconvenient historical truths, renders it a competent but somewhat forgettable chapter. It functions adequately as a period action piece but falls short of the series’ demonstrated potential for gritty, morally complex wartime drama.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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›Television Review: Kanal (Otpisani, S1X06, 1975)@drax168d

Kanal (S01E06)

Airdate: 26 January 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 48 minutes

The enduring quality of the Yugoslav television series Otpisani (The Written Offs) is such that even an episode which, on its surface, appears to be a deliberate rehash of a previous premise can, through sheer creative grit and execution, be transformed into something radically distinct and superior. This is exemplified by the sixth episode, Kanal (“The Sewer”). What begins as a seeming revisit of the second episode Garaža'’s sewer-based escape evolves into a masterclass in tension and moral complexity, resulting in one of the most suspenseful and arguably finest pieces of television produced in 1970s Yugoslavia.Kanal leverages its familiar setting as a foundation for a more psychologically harrowing and technically audacious narrative, proving the series’ capacity for depth within its popular war drama format.

The structural echo is clear: in Garaža, the protagonists used Belgrade’s sewer network to escape after sabotaging German vehicles. In Kanal, the sewers are again the crucial conduit, but this time for an offensive operation—infiltrating and destroying a heavily guarded German explosives warehouse. This shift from escape route to assault corridor fundamentally changes the episode’s DNA, trading a chase’s adrenaline for an incursion’s agonising suspense. The objective is more spectacular, but the stakes, both physical and emotional, are exponentially higher.

The plot meticulously constructs its obstacles. The need for explosives leads the pragmatic Tihi (Vojislav Brajović) and the impulsive Prle (Dragan Nikolić) on a reconnaissance, while Paja is tasked with sourcing them through the black market. This thread introduces a moment of darkly comic misfortune typical of the series’ tone: Paja’s contact betrays him, and the Gestapo, acting on the tip, arrest not Paja but his innocuous cafe-owner boss Spira (an excellent Bata Paskaljević). The explosives are ultimately secured through a more ingenious, character-driven avenue. The civil engineer Babić (Miodrag Milovanov), who has ingratiated himself with German officers at the Kalemegdan Fortress with tales of his Herzegovinian heritage, is tasked by the resistance into stealing explosives. His tense retrieval and the subsequent meet-up in a warehouse—briefly interrupted by a farcical scene where a German NCO fails to seduce a local woman—showcase the series’ deft blend of suspense and social observation.

The recruitment of three young, inexperienced volunteers adds a layer of poignant vulnerability. Tihi’s sober offer for anyone to withdraw, met with silent resolve, is a powerful moment that underlines the voluntary, personal nature of their sacrifice. Their descent into the dark, smelly and claustrophobic sewers marks the point of no return. The claustrophobia is palpable, culminating in young Bane’s (Ivan Šebalj) panic attack, a raw human moment amidst the war machinery. The infiltration, with Prle in German uniform subduing a sentry, is executed with clean, tense precision. However, the success of the spectacular explosion is immediately undermined by discovery, triggering a frantic retreat.

Here, the episode introduces its brilliant central complication: the concurrent, routine flooding of the sewers by the water authorities. This natural, bureaucratic threat is as formidable as the German soldiers in brutal pursuit. It creates a relentless, dual-pressure environment where the resistance group and their pursuers are equally victim to the rising water. Uncle Marko (Božidar Savićević), the sympathetic water engineer, embodies this desperate race against institutional inevitability. The flooding elevates the chase from a martial contest to a primal struggle for survival against a neutral, indifferent force. The death of the wounded Bane is a direct, tragic consequence, raising the human cost. Tihi’s decision to sacrifice himself by splitting the group and drawing fire is the episode’s moral zenith, a moment where his famed level-headedness translates into heartbreaking nobility. His survival, wounded and awaiting death only to be spared by the retreating waters and rescued by Čibi and Marko, is one of the series’ most emotionally resonant moments. The final shot of him being carried towards the light, scored by Milivoje Marković’s harmonica-led theme, is unforgettable.

Kanal is often rightly considered the pinnacle of Otpisani. Its power derives from a simple, focused plot that services profound character examination. For the first time, the unflappable Tihi’s fate is genuinely in doubt, investing the entire proceedings with a deeper gravity. Furthermore, the episode brilliantly uses its runtime for tonal texture. The scenes of Babić entertaining German officers with folkloric bravado and Spira’s hapless arrest provide necessary levity and social satire, while the warehouse vignette offers a subtly humorous critique of occupation dynamics.

Much of the episode’s visceral authenticity stems from director Aleksandar Đorđević’s commitment to shooting in real sewage tunnels. This was not an aesthetic choice but a gruelling necessity, and the cast and crew’s documented hardship directly translates to screen. The environment’s oppressive dampness, grime, and palpable danger are not simulated; they are real, lending the actors’ performances a grounded desperation that sets could never replicate. Judging by the final product, this sacrifice was utterly justified.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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›Television Review: Pečurke (Otpisani, S1X05, 1975)@drax169d

Pečurke (S01E05)

Airdate: 19 January 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 48 minutes

Even within a relatively short and thematically consistent television series like Otpisani, which maintains a tightly focused narrative on the Yugoslav Partisan resistance in occupied Belgrade, it is inevitable that certain episodes will prove more controversial than others. Such is the case with Pečurke (‘Mushrooms’), the series’ fifth instalment. Its contentious nature, however, stems not from any deficiency in general quality—indeed, it ranks among the more expertly crafted hours of the programme—but from its cavalier and flagrant departure from historical truth in pursuit of cinematic thrills. This episode represents the point where the series’ admirable dramatic compression begins to significantly outweigh its commitment to veracity, resulting in a thrilling, often darkly humorous, yet ultimately ahistorical piece of partisan myth-making.

The plot is set in motion with characteristic efficiency. ‘Tihi’ arrives at the Belgrade Municipal Mushroom Farm to meet the chief agronomist, Branko (Ramiz Sekić), a resistance member. Here, he learns of plans for a major sabotage operation. The expertise required draws in two operatives from across the river: ‘Cibe’ (Ratislav Jović), an explosives expert, and ‘Zoran’ (Mida Stevanović), who cross from Zemun in the fascist Independent State of Croatia into German-occupied Belgrade. The episode’s titular mushrooms provide the central, almost farcical, narrative device. They serve as the pretext for ‘Prle’ to infiltrate the home of a minister (Janez Vrhovec) in Milan Nedić’s collaborationist government. Posing as a delivery boy, Prle first seduces the minister’s housemaid, Marija (Vesna Pećanac), to secure his access. After delivering the mushrooms to the minister’s wife, Melanija (Nada Kasapić), he secretly remains overnight in Marija’s room. Under cover of darkness, he slips into the minister’s study to steal plans for the main post office and telephone exchange from his safe. The minister himself is preoccupied with a card game with a German general, a circumstance that should favour Prle. However, a run of bad luck forces the minister to visit the safe for more cash, compelling Prle to hide behind a curtain at the critical moment. The minister dismisses the noise as the family cat, allowing Prle a narrow escape with the vital documents.

The consequences of this theft unfold with grim inevitability. Later, on a winning streak, the minister returns to deposit his earnings and discovers the missing plans. Reconstruction of events is swift. The Special Police arrest Marija, and a subsequent raid on the Mushroom Farm ends with Branko and Zoran being killed while resisting arrest. Gestapo Colonel Müller, seeing that the stolen plans included details of a fuel storage facility, orders Major Krieger to reinforce its security, hoping to set a trap. However, the Partisans’ true target is the central post office itself. In a daring operation, Prle, Tihi, Paja, and Cibe infiltrate the building disguised as German soldiers, using a stolen vehicle. Cibe, the consummate professional, has ample time to place his explosives for maximum destructive effect. Their exit, however, is compromised when an alarm sounds, triggering a frantic firefight as they battle their way out. They reach their getaway car, but in a moment of poetic, tragic pride, Cibe hesitates, yearning to hear his handiwork detonate. This brief pause is fatal; he is struck by a bullet and dies in the fleeing car, with Prle voicing a bitter lament that a comrade has been lost for a mere post office.

One of the episode’s defining and most successful aspects is its insistence on levity, even amidst grave peril. The humour often emanates from Prle’s incorrigible character. In the final assault, he must be chastised for lustfully gazing at Wehrmacht female telephone operators. His successful seduction of Marija sets off a domestic chain reaction within the minister’s household, as his wife drags him to the proverbial doghouse after finding cigarette butts in the maid’s room, mistakenly believing them to be his. This domestic farce is cleverly intercut with the central heist, the irony underscored by the card game’s fortunes: the minister’s losing streak perfectly coincides with Prle’s successful theft. This blending of bedroom comedy, suspense, and ironic juxtaposition showcases the episode’s sophisticated and confident screenplay.

Where Pečurke fundamentally falters, however, is in its relationship to history. The final, spectacular shootout, replete with gunfire and fallen ‘redshirt’ German soldiers, is compelling cinema but pure fiction. The Belgrade Main Post Office was indeed damaged during the Second World War, but this occurred during the initial German aerial bombardment in April 1941, prior to the occupation. Throughout the occupation, the post office remained operational and was never the target of a significant sabotage action by the Belgrade resistance. The episode unconsciously appropriates a feat from a different struggle. A major post office was successfully and devastatingly bombed by the resistance on September 14th, 1941, but this was in Zagreb, the capital of the Independent State of Croatia. That action, which degraded German telecommunications in Southeast Europe for months, was later dramatised in the 1982 television series Nepokoreni grad (in the episode E4–72-96), often considered a thematic counterpart or response to Otpisani.

The historical irony deepens upon examining the minister character. He is portrayed with superb, weary cynicism by Janez Vrhovec. While unnamed in the episode, the character is clearly based on General Josif Kostić (1878–1960), the real Minister of Posts in Nedić’s government. In a curious twist, this fictionalised portrayal, down to Vrhovec’s performance, is arguably the episode’s most historically accurate element, a fact reinforced when the actor reprised the role in the 1978 sequel series, Povratak otpisanih.

Despite its brazen historical licence, Pečurke is an expertly constructed piece of television. The direction is taut, particularly in the extended sequence of the document theft, which masterfully balances nail-biting suspense with the dark comedy of the minister’s card-night misfortunes. The dialogue is sharp, the character interactions are lively, and the action sequences are choreographed with a clarity often missing from modern counterparts. It is, in essence, a superb episode of television built upon an unsound historical foundation. It sacrifices the specific truth of Belgrade’s resistance for a universal, crowd-pleasing myth of daring, humour, and sacrifice—a myth that, as the episode itself admits with Cibe’s death, can come at a cost that feels, even to its protagonists, curiously disproportionate.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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›Television Review: Štamparija (Otpisani, S1X04, 1975)@drax174d

Štamparija (S01E04)

Airdate: 12 January 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 48 minutes

When a television series attempts to depict the granular reality of resistance activities in an occupied city, it inevitably faces a narrative hierarchy. Some endeavours—daring rescues, spectacular sabotage, tense internal betrayals—are naturally conducive to action and suspense. The fourth episode of the seminal Yugoslav series Otpisani (“The Written-Off Ones”), titled Štamparija (“The Print Studio”), initially seems to occupy a lower, more prosaic rung. It forgoes the immediate adrenaline of its predecessors, which featured the audacious liberation of a captured comrade, the blistering destruction of German military vehicles, and the rooting out of a traitor within the ranks. Instead, it commits itself to the ostensibly banal, painstaking, and deeply unglamorous world of propaganda production. Yet, through a masterful synthesis of historical fidelity and devastating dramatic compression, the episode constructs a narrative of quiet, nerve-shredding tension that ultimately delivers one of the series’ most profoundly haunting conclusions.

The plot is anchored in a remarkable historical truth: the clandestine printing press established by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in occupied Belgrade during the summer of 1941. This operation, responsible for leaflets, bulletins, and official directives, miraculously evaded detection by German and collaborationist authorities until its final raid in July 1944, a mere three months before the city's liberation. The episode condenses this three-year struggle for secrecy into a matter of days, presumably in late 1941, a necessary compression for dramatic momentum. It opens not with intrigue, but with a solemn Orthodox wedding. Dr. Janković (Zoran Milosavljević) and Olivera (Svetlana Bojković), two high-level Party activists, marry solely to secure the cover of a married couple and obtain residence in a villa where the printing studio will be established. They are joined by Ivana (Ljubica Ković), posing as their maid, while printers Zare (Đorđe Jelisić) and Nenad (Josif Tatić) are consigned to the hidden cellar. This church scene is notably sympathetic, with the Communist resistance members observing approvingly—a subtle reflection of 1970s Yugoslavia’s more relaxed attitude towards religion, despite the state’s official atheism. The only tension is the brief, intrusive arrival of a German patrol, a reminder of the occupation that frames their every move.

The enemy response is swift. Gestapo Colonel Müller (Rudolf Ulrich) is incensed by the flood of Communist leaflets, a provocation magnified by Prle’s characteristic bravado in leaving them at the Gestapo’s own doorstep. Major Krieger (Stevo Žigon) is given eight days to uncover the source. The hunt begins with chilling efficiency, tracking down Lazić (Aleksandar Goranin), a student courier. Lazić dies resisting arrest, while a female activist (Branka Zorić) escapes only through the courageous intervention of neighbours who present her to Krieger as their daughter. This early success tightens the noose. Tihi delivers materials to the villa, but Dr. Janković, visited daily at his university office by the suspiciously polite and perceptive Major Krieger, feels the danger acutely. Krieger’s intimidation tactic is his unnervingly courteous demeanour, a formidable quality that makes him a uniquely threatening villain. Janković, his Oxford background marking him as a potential British link, decides to flee. Olivera remains, only to be informed by Krieger that the villa is to be requisitioned. Forced to relocate the entire operation, she too eventually departs for Partisan territory, leaving Tihi with a hope to reunite in a liberated Belgrade.

The script simultaneously tightens the vice on the collaborationist side. Krieger reminds the newly installed head of the Special Police, Krsta Mišić (Vasa Pantelić), that his position is contingent on finding the press within the same eight-day deadline. Krsta, a capable and ruthless policeman, is is dogged and pragmatic. The breakthrough comes not from police work alone, but from the exploitation of human tragedy. The script injects a powerful, fictional emotional backstory for Zare: devoted to a young son he has not seen for weeks, he risks a visit home only to learn his family has been deported to the Banjica concentration camp. Utterly shattered, his tradecraft fails him, allowing him to be tailed by Mišić’s agent Limar (Dušan Vujinović) to a new safe house belonging to Milan (Mirko Bulović), a pre-war Communist detainee. The studio is compromised.

The ensuing raid is a masterpiece of escalating dread. A warning attempt by the Special Police double agent Slavko fails. When Prle and Tihi arrive, it is too late for anything but a desperate, futile diversion—a burst of gunfire and a few thrown grenades meant to signal the printers and extract some retaliatory “redshirt” casualties from the police ranks. This action feels somewhat grafted on, a concession to the genre’s expectation of a final shootout. However, it does little to dilute the episode’s oppressive darkness. Inside, the trapped Zare and Nenad face their end. In the episode’s most brutally cruel moment, Krsta Mišić manipulates Milan’s young son, forcing the boy to call out to the hidden men. Faced with certain capture and torture, and echoing the fate of their historical counterparts, Zare and Nenad choose suicide. Their off-screen deaths are a stark, gut-wrenching conclusion that underscores the brutal calculus of their silent war: the machinery of resistance was more valuable than any single life, including their own.

The episode’s strength lies in its scrupulous adherence to the core history. Dr. Janković is closely modelled on Dr. Milo Bošković, an Oxford-educated Montenegrin physician who would later perish in Jasenovac. Olivera is based on Zagorka “Zaga” Jovanović, a medical student who married Bošković. The forced relocation of the press after the villa’s requisition in August 1943 is faithfully transposed. Most powerfully, the fates of Zare and Nenad directly mirror those of the real printers Branko Đonović and Slobodan Jović. The script’s major departure—the compression of three years into days—is a necessary dramatic device. The invention of Zare’s family tragedy, while fictional, serves a profound purpose: it transforms him from a faceless operative into a tragic figure, making his final act not just ideologically dutiful but personally despairing, a choice made by a man who has already lost everything.

Where the episode truly excels is in its characterisation of the antagonists. Krsta Mišić is not a caricature; he is a competent, relentless professional whose devilish ruthlessness is all the more terrifying for its cold practicality. Major Krieger, meanwhile, is a study in menacing politeness. His scenes, particularly his casual, unsettling flirtation with Olivera (a role that propelled the esteemed career of Svetlana Bojković, who would return in the sequel Povratak otpisanih playing the same character under a different name), are charged with a palpable, sophisticated threat. He represents the insidious, intelligent face of the occupation.

The ultimate failure of the episode, if one exists, is its somewhat jarring final act. The intervention by Prle and Tihi feels like a narrative afterthought, an attempt to inject action-genre credentials and a token body count to offset the overwhelming bleakness of the printers’ sacrifice. It is a tonal stumble in an otherwise impeccably controlled descent into tragedy.

Štamparija, despite this flaws works because it embraces the inherent drama of its seemingly mundane subject: the relentless, paranoid, and ultimately sacrificial work of keeping the word alive. It demonstrates that in the shadow war of occupation, the most potent weapon could be a leaflet, and its defence could demand a price far heavier than a gunfight. In doing so, it delivers a critical, sombre, and emotionally resonant chapter that remains a standout in the series’ acclaimed run.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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›Television Review: Izdajnik (Otpisani, S1X03, 1975)@drax175d
Izdajnik (S01E03)

Airdate: 5 January 1975

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 48 minutes

Otpisani (The Written-Offs) enjoys a hallowed place in the collective memory of the former Yugoslavia, often recalled with a fond, nostalgic glow as prime entertainment, a thrilling series about dashing young resistance fighters outwitting their Nazi occupiers. This perception, however, obscures the show’s far grimmer and more morally complex core. From its outset, the series never shied away from the brutal and tragic realities of life under World War II occupation, dealing into uncomfortable ethical quandaries faced by those engaged in clandestine warfare. This penchant for darkness reaches a profound crescendo in its third episode, Izdajnik (The Traitor). Here, the cost of resistance is counted in betrayal, sacrifice, and a chilling erosion of trust, marking a decisive tonal shift from adventurous romp to sombre espionage thriller.

The first two episodes, Bolnica and Garaža, established a pattern of audacious, successful operations. The protagonists, led by the cool Tihi (Voja Brajović) and the impulsive Prle (Dragan Nikolić), rescued a captured Party leader from a heavily guarded hospital and orchestrated the spectacular destruction of dozens of German vehicles in a garage. Izdajnik immediately dismantles any sense of invincibility, demonstrating that such triumphs incur a dire price. The first to pay is someone entirely incidental: Lili, the exotic nightclub dancer who merely facilitated Tihi’s access to the garage. Her arrest and swift execution by the Gestapo is relayed with cold, bureaucratic finality to a guilt-stricken Zriki (Čedomir Petrović). This early moment sets the episode’s key theme: the war’s violence indiscriminately consumes the peripherally involved as readily as the committed combatants.

This casualty occurs amidst a leadership transition, with the cell’s commander, Milan, departing for the Partisan countryside and being replaced by the new liaison, Lela (Mira Dinulović). The operational atmosphere grows increasingly paranoid as Prle, through his corrupt police contact Pera “Uvce,” learns the Special Police has a high-level mole within their ranks, known only by the codename “Beli” (The White). Tihi’s reflexive loyalty leads him to dismiss the possibility, a faith that the narrative systematically destroys. Lela tasks their own mole within the Special Police, Slavko (Miroljub Lešo), with uncovering Beli’s identity. Slavko succeeds only in photographing a sample of Beli’s handwriting, but this proves fatal. Zriki, upon seeing the photograph, instantly recognises the traitor. Before he can act on this knowledge, he is hunted down and killed by Special Police agents. The resistance is now haemorrhaging its members not to front-line combat, but to the shadow war of counter-intelligence.

The net tightens further with the arrest of Tihi’s girlfriend, Nina, an act that confirms Beli’s treachery and existence. In response, Prle formulates a desperate, audacious plan: the assassination of the formidable Special Police chief, Nikola. The rationale is that his tactical brilliance is the greatest threat, and his removal would grant the cell vital breathing space. The ensuing ambush, executed by Prle, Tihi, Mile, and Paja, is a tactical success. Yet, in his dying moments, Nikola unveils the devastating truth by addressing Mile as “Beli.”Mile’s confession—that he was captured, tortured, and blackmailed into cooperation—completes the episode’s tragic arc. His subsequent, suicidal engagement with a German patrol in a bid for redemption is a melodramatic flourish, but it serves the narrative’s purpose: even betrayal is born from weakness and pain, not mere villainy.

Structurally, Izdajnik is notably less reliant on the large-scale action set pieces of its predecessors. It functions far more as a conventional spy thriller, a chamber piece of suspicion and investigation where the primary antagonists are not German soldiers but collaborationist Serbs within the Nedić administration’s security apparatus. The German patrol at the climax feels almost like an obligatory concession to the action genre, inserted primarily to provide a cinematically redemptive end for the traitor. The real drama lies in the fraught interactions between the resistance cell and the quisling Serbian state machinery.

The human cost laid bare is immense. Tihi loses two of his four closest friends introduced in the premiere. Nina’s arrest reveals her Jewish heritage, all but sealing her fate, a horror compounded when she is taken to see her tortured stepfather in the infamous Banjica camp. The episode deliberately introduces the mothers of Prle and Zriki, grounding the high-stakes espionage in the tangible, domestic worry of families left behind. This grim reality is the episode’s backbone.

As with the rest of the series, the script by Dragan Marković and Siniša Pavić draws from historical events but compresses and fictionalises them for dramatic effect. The “Appeal to the Serbian Nation” of August 1941, which leads to the imprisonment of intellectuals, is inaccurately attributed to General Milan Nedić (who actually came to power days after its issuance). The concept of a high-ranking mole echoes the real-life betrayal by Communist Youth official Ratko Mitrović Šilja. Most directly, the assassination of Chief Nikola is modelled on the ambush and killing of Đorđe Kosmajac, a top Special Police agent, in March 1942. By weaving these truths into its narrative, Izdajnik transcends mere thriller tropes to offer a stark reflection on the pervasive fear, moral compromise, and personal devastation that defined underground resistance in occupied Belgrade. It is a powerful, sobering instalment that confirms Otpisani was always far more than simple adventure television; it was a unflinching exploration of war’s corrosive impact on the human spirit.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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›Television Review: Garaža (Otpisani, S1X02, 1974)@drax179d

Garaža (S01E02)

Airdate: 29 December 1974

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 48 minutes

In the post-Communist era, it became a fashionable intellectual stance across the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Serbia, to dismiss the once-revered partisan series Otpisani as little more than state-sanctioned agitprop. While it is undeniable that the series enjoyed the full favour of regime and its creators took significant dramatic liberties, to claim it was entirely fabricated would be a profound error. The series’ enduring power stems precisely from its skilful grafting of compelling fiction onto a robust trunk of historical fact. The second episode, Garaža (“The Garage”), serves as a prime example of this synthesis. It constructs a tense, action-driven narrative around a seminal real event—the torching of a German motor pool in Belgrade—while weaving in authentic details of the brutal occupation, thereby creating a mythologised yet recognisably grounded chapter of resistance history.

The episode’s central narrative engine is the arson attack on a German military garage in central Belgrade on the night of 26 July 1941, which resulted in the destruction of 23 vehicles. This was not a fictional contrivance but the single largest act of sabotage in a series carried out by Communist Youth militants that turbulent summer. This event was the immediate precursor to the resistance’s most audacious operation: the jailbreak of Aleksandar Ranković, depicted in the first episode, Bolnica.

The plot mechanics are set in motion with the arrest of the comrades’ associate, Boban (Žarko Radić). In a chilling sequence, Boban is among five prisoners arbitrarily selected by Gestapo Major Frank (Nikola Jovanović) for execution. The subsequent public hanging of the bodies on Terazije, Belgrade’s main square, is presented not merely as a plot point but as a stark representation of German reprisal policy. This directly references the infamous hanging of five prisoners on Terazije on 16 August 1941, an act designed to terrorise the populace. Here, the script, whilst altering the chronology, faithfully captures the method and psychological impact of Nazi occupation terror.

The episode’s core suspense derives from the practical challenges of the sabotage mission. The reconnaissance by Tihi and Zriki from a bombed-out building establishes the tactical problem: breaching a heavily guarded compound. The solution introduces one of the series’ more morally ambiguous subplots. Tihi reconnects with his former neighbour, Ljilja, now ‘Lili’ (Radmila Teodorović), a dancer entangled with Major Frank. Using his youthful charm and the pretence of black-market dealings, Tihi manipulates her to obtain a garage pass. The transaction is sealed with a reluctant sexual liaison, a moment of profound discomfort for Tihi, who has a girlfriend. This narrative choice—depicting a resistance hero effectively prostituting himself—is remarkably gritty. It adds a layer of cynical realism, challenging the pristine, ideologically pure partisan archetype. Its inclusion, handled with a notably brief and discreet scene, likely allowed it to pass state censors and avoid controversies, perhaps because it ultimately reinforces sacrifice for the cause, however personally degrading.

Parallel to this personal drama runs a classic Otpisani action set-piece. The accidental death of two resistance bomb-makers—a nod to real incidents involving Spanish Civil War veterans in August 1941—creates a shortage of explosives. Prle and Zriki remedy this with a daring heist. Donning stolen German uniforms, they ambush an officer, commandeer his vehicle, and storm a warehouse to seize the necessary materials. This sequence, pure pulp adventure, serves as the series’ stock-in-trade: demonstrating the ingenuity and boldness of the resistance whilst providing thrilling entertainment.

The sabotage itself is executed with procedural precision. Tihi infiltrates the garage, neutralises a guard, and cuts the wire. Zriki and Paja then ingress to plant the explosives. The ensuing chaos, however, is where director Aleksandar Đorđević fully embraces cinematic spectacle over historical fidelity. A tip-off to the Special Police, led by the Nikola and Krsta, triggers a prolonged and pyrotechnic firefight. In reality, the actual garage attack of July 1941 was a stealth operation concluded without a major confrontation. The episode’s extended shootout, replete with submachine gun bursts and grenade explosions, is a concession to audience demand for action, transforming a successful sabotage into a grand battle. The climax is carnage: Major Frank is killed, numerous police and German soldiers fall, and two members of the supporting Dorćol resistance cell are slain. Prle and Mile’s escape through the sewers provides a final, iconic image of survival against the odds.

Garaža thus operates on two distinct levels. Its script is meticulously researched, referencing a tapestry of real events: the garage arson, the Terazije hangings, the accidents in bomb-making workshops. Yet, it freely reorders this chronology and amplifies the drama for maximum impact. Đorđević’s direction emphasises this duality. The reconnaissance and infiltration scenes carry a tense, almost documentary realism, while the climax explodes into a fantastical, Hollywood-style battle.

This layering extends to minor details that reveal the production’s constraints and era. Military history enthusiasts will instantly spot the M8 Greyhound armoured car, a piece of American equipment supplied to Yugoslavia after the 1948 Tito-Stalin split, awkwardly standing in for a German vehicle. A more culturally jarring anachronism occurs in the nightclub scene, where dancers perform to Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance—a composition premiered in the Soviet Union in 1942, making its presence in a 1941 Belgrade club under Nazi occupation an impossibility. This scene was wisely cut from later remastered editions.

Ultimately, Garaža is a compelling artefact of its time. It is neither pure documentary nor mere propaganda. It is a mythopoeic work that uses historical fact as a foundation upon which to construct a heroic narrative. The episode acknowledges the brutality of occupation, the pragmatic, sometimes morally compromised actions of the resistance, and the high cost of war. Yet, it concludes with the triumphant explosion—a symbol of effective defiance. It assures its contemporary audience that their historical struggle was both noble and cinematically spectacular, fulfilling its dual role as education and entertainment. To dismiss it as only propaganda is to overlook its sophisticated, and enduring, craftsmanship as a piece of historical fiction that successfully blurred the line between the lived past and the needed myth.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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›Television Review: Bolnica (Otpisani, S1X01, 1974)@drax180d

Bolnica (S01E01)

Airdate: 22 December 1974

Written by: Dragan Marković & Siniša Pavić Directed by: Aleksandar Đorđević

Running Time: 47 minutes

The Partisan film, a genre specific to socialist Yugoslavia, is typically associated with ambitious, large-scale cinematic epics glorifying the National Liberation Struggle. However, its most iconic and enduringly popular characters—the street-smart Prle and the earnest Tihi—originated not on the silver screen but on television, as the protagonists of the 1974 series Otpisani (The Written Off) and its 1978 sequel Povratak Otpisanih (The Return of the Written Off). The first episode of this landmark series, Bolnica (“The Hospital”), serves not only as a masterful introduction to its world and characters but also as a fascinating artifact of its time, showcasing a deliberate and surprisingly successful attempt to modernise the Partisan narrative for a 1970s youth audience.

The series has its roots in the 1956 novel Zabranjeni život (Forbidden Life) by Dragan Marković, a Serbian journalist and veteran of the Communist resistance in occupied Belgrade. Drawing from his and his comrades' experiences, the novel was adapted in 1973 into a screenplay tentatively titled Petorica Otpisanih (The Five Written Off). Sold to Radiotelevizija Beograd, the script was reworked by Siniša Pavić and directed by Aleksandar Đorđević into the thirteen-part series that premiered the following year.

Bolnica efficiently establishes the premise: in June 1941, brothers Tihi (“the Silent”, Voja Brajović) and Čibi (Aleksandar Berček) return to a bombed-out Belgrade. Their home destroyed and father a prisoner of war, they find refuge on their uncle’s river barge. There, Tihi reunites with four pre-war friends from the Communist Youth: the charismatic and quick-tempered Prle (Dragan Nikolić), the jovial Mile (Vladan Holec), the reliable Zriki (Čedomir Petrović), and the pragmatic Paja Bakšiš (Miki Manojlović). Their initial elation at news of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union—seen as a harbinger of rapid German defeat—is brutally quashed by the reality of occupation when a casual street encounter with a Volksdeutsche woman leads to Prle being slapped by a German patrol, a humiliation he vows to avenge.

The plot proper is set in motion when Party organiser Skale (Slobodan Aligrudić) informs his subordinate Milan (Rade Marković) that a high-ranking female Partisan, who has just given birth, has been arrested by the Gestapo and is held in a hospital under guard. Milan is tasked with organising her rescue and recruits the group of youths. Their first hurdle is arming themselves, achieved through a tense, night-time ambush on a German patrol. The action is chaotic and grounded; Paja is shot in the buttocks, but they kill three soldiers and secure a pistol and two submachine guns. Meanwhile, the narrative cross-cuts to the hospital, where the prisoner is guarded by collaborationist gendarmes and the Special Police, whose chief Nikola (Dušan Perković) and deputy Krsta (Vasa Pantelić) are summoned to Gestapo headquarters. There, Colonel Müller (Robert Ulrich) and his deputy, Major Krieger (Stevo Žigon), demand the prisoner be handed over, suspecting the attending doctor, Dr. Borić (Voja Mirić), of stalling. When agents arrive to interrogate him, Borić commits suicide by jumping from a window. The rescue attempt proceeds with Milan and Tihi bluffing their way into the hospital as Special Police agents, overpowering the guard, and escaping with the woman and her newborn in a truck driven by Paja’s cousin Cane Kurbla (Ivan Bekjarev). A pursuing shootout with Special Police agents claims the life of the jovial jockey Simke (Dragan Maksimović), who sacrifices himself to buy time. The episode concludes with Major Krieger castigating Nikola for the failure. When Nikola insists all resistance members will be listed, Krieger delivers the series’ defining line: “I don’t want them on the list. I want them written off.”

What is immediately striking about Bolnica is its modernity, particularly compared to the more solemn, monumental Partisan films of the preceding decades. The sole anachronistic element is its black-and-white cinematography, a choice driven partly by budget and partly by the fact that colour television was still a novelty in mid-1970s Yugoslavia. This technical limitation did not hinder its impact; Bolnica and the following episode Garaža were later edited into a colour theatrical film. The sequel series, Povratak Otpisanih, would be filmed in colour. The episode’s contemporary feel is fundamentally anchored in its music. The main theme, composed by jazz musician Milivoje Marković, is a funky, driving piece more evocative of 1970s blaxploitation or crime films than a World War II drama. This score is used strategically, accentuating action and suspense sequences, and immediately signals a departure from traditional, orchestral partisan marches.

This modernising approach was a conscious effort by the authorities and creators to make the foundational myth of Communist Yugoslavia more palatable and “hip” to the country’s younger generation. Consequently, Bolnica contains remarkably little overt propaganda or direct references to Communist ideology. The youths are motivated less by political doctrine than by a sense of camaraderie, rebellion against foreign oppression, and personal honour (as seen in Prle’s need to redeem his slapped face). Their costumes, hairstyles, and attitudes consciously mirror the rebellious, anti-establishment youth culture of the 1970s, transforming them into relatable protagonists for a contemporary audience. The episode establishes its core character dynamics with economic precision. Tihi, presumably from a middle-class background, is positioned as the serious, cautious “straight man.” In contrast, Prle, from the “wrong side of the tracks” with a history of petty crime, provides much of the episode’s humour and impulsive energy. This contrast between the two would form the emotional backbone of the entire series.

The antagonists are given equal care. Major Krieger (Stevo Žigon) is established as a formidable, intelligent foe. The casting is rich with irony, as Žigon was in reality a member of the Communist resistance in occupied Ljubljana and a Dachau concentration camp survivor, an experience he later cited as inspiration for his portrayals of Nazis. The episode also introduces darker historical context through Tihi’s girlfriend Nina (Jelena Čvorović), who confesses she is Jewish and lives in terror, having seen Jews forced to wear the yellow star on Belgrade’s streets. This subplot, though brief, integrates the Holocaust into the narrative in a personal, affecting way.

The most intriguing and historically complex aspect of Bolnica is its relationship to real events. The hospital raid is a composite of two notable resistance actions. The primary inspiration is the audacious July 29, 1941, liberation of Aleksandar Ranković, a member of the Politbureau of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, from a Belgrade hospital where he was held by the Gestapo. This operation, during which a gendarme and a German soldier were killed, was among the most spectacular Partisan actions of the early occupation. However, by the 1970s, Ranković had become a non-person. After rising to become one of Yugoslavia’s most powerful figures and head of the dreaded UDBA secret police, he fell out with Tito and was purged in 1966. His legacy was politically toxic. Therefore, the series’ writers transformed the rescued prisoner into a woman, a composite also drawing from the January 1942 rescue of Ivanka Muačević-Nikoliš. This alteration is a stark illustration of how the series, while grounded in historical struggle, was also subject to the shifting tides of Yugoslav political memory, sanitising its narrative to align with contemporary political orthodoxy.

Bolnica is as a remarkably effective series pilot and a culturally significant piece of television. It successfully rebranded the Partisan genre for a new generation, swapping mythic grande. It laid the foundation for a series that would achieve cult status across Yugoslavia, its reruns attracting millions of viewers, and proved that the small screen could create war-time heroes as compelling, if not more so, than any big-budget film.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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