[Onkel Neal]

Season 2 is up June 9

Das Boot: this tense submarine thriller is 'TV for dads' that the rest of us can enjoy

Growing up I always assumed the movie Das Boot was an elaborate joke played on me by my father. There cannot be a five-hour film, sorry. Subtitled entirely in German. Which you had to record in two shifts, as two half-films, from two late-night showings on BBC Two. And erase my tape of Jurassic Park to do it. None of this is real.

I assumed that, when I marched into the front room during the five dedicated hours put aside for watching Das Boot, I would discover what strange adult ritual my dad was really performing – sniffing glue? Eating olives? Saying the word “f----” out loud? – but, no. He really was sitting there, on his sofa, arms folded and legs outstretched, utterly engrossed in 300 minutes of German lads going slowly mad in a submarine. One day, I figured, I would grow up, and have a beard, and watch Das Boot, and then I would be a dad, transformed from a child for ever.

Well, it’s 2020, and I wouldn’t call it a beard exactly but there’s something up there, and Sky Atlantic is about to air season two of its big-budget adaptation of Das Boot (Thursday, 10.05pm). Do I understand now why Dad recorded over four episodes of The Simpsons to watch the predecessor? Sort of, but not exactly. I mean: kind of. But also no.

https://www.sky.com/watch/title/seri...on-2/episode-1