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The misadventures of hapless cafe owner René Artois and his escapades with the Resistance in occupied France.
1985
After the British airmen are gone for good – or so René thinks – there is still the problem of Herr Flick owning all three copies of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies (the original and two fakes), and while Herr Flick kidnaps Lieutenant Gruber (a former art house worker), the Colonel and the Captain start to plan their next move. All the while, René's widow Edith has found René's will, and being the sole beneficiary, goes on a spending spree with René's money to attract better suitors. And the British airmen return as nuns. They are last seen hidden in the piano.
René is caught in a dilemma when he must choose between the women he loves: his waitresses Yvette and Maria, and his wife Edith, who, as his widow, has all his money. Unfortunately, he cannot bring himself to woo Edith again, so Edith seeks the attention that she can get from other suitors in town.
We pick up the action mere moments after the close of the previous episode, as the airmen-filled cow narrowly escapes being milked by a German patrol while awaiting the landing of the plane. As they watch in disappointment, the plane does not land, and instead jettisoning two parachutes, one of which yields a new escape package; the other, Officer Crabtree, sent from "British Ontelligence Headquitters". Disguised as a policeman, he is supposed to blend in. Unfortunately, his French is abominable, getting the vowels wrong as often as not. Meanwhile, the plan to blow up the non-painting-filled knockwurst on its way to Hitler has hit a snag: René can't find anyone to blow up the train.
After failing to destroy the train, which will take the copy of the painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies to Hitler, René and the Captain are captured by the Resistance, only to be rescued by Herr Flick. The Colonel and the Captain are afraid that Hitler will understand that the painting is a copy, and prepare to escape to Switzerland. In the meantime, British agent in disguise, Officer Crabtree, has a new escape plan for the British airmen.
René tries to hide from the seconds of Monsieur Alphonse, the undertaker, but in his stead Lieutenant Gruber accepts the duel. However, the Colonel and the Captain want to save René and plan an exercise to "accidentally" kill Monsieur Alphonse. The plan is thwarted by Herr Flick, who has discovered that the sausage that was sent to Berlin containing the painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies did not contain any painting – either real or fake. Herr Flick correctly assumes that the Colonel and the Captain stole the painting, and arrests them and cancels the exercise. Now René has to fight the duel on his own, while Yvette and Maria grieve on the sidelines and his wife Edith catches up on the gossip of the week.
Having ran away from the duel with Monsieur Alphonse, René hides. He's rescued by Michelle of the Resistance who smuggles him back into the café dressed as a member of the Resistance, while she explains to Monsieur Alphonse that René is the bravest man in France. But Herr Flick has captured the Colonel and the Captain, and brings in René as well, and threatens to torture them unless they reveal where the painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies is hidden. They are rescued by General Von Klinkerhoffen. With life back to normal, there's only the matter of getting the British airmen out. As the General imposes a curfew, Michelle's plan is a funeral for Madame Fanny.
1986
After the Colonel makes René promise not to have further contact with the Resistance, Herr Flick's sausage (containing the forgery of the Fallen Madonna) is stolen by the Communist Resistance. The Colonel and the Captain are anxious that it isn't revealed that they have switched the paintings, and order René to come up with the ransom, which Edith gets from Monsieur Alphonse. The ransom is to be left by René and his staff, dressed as German soldiers. But the whole thing is watched by German soldiers dressed as French policemen, the Gestapo dressed as French Resistance girls, and the Colonel and the Captain dressed as trees. And of course, Lieutenant Gruber stumbles upon the meeting, and his dog can't help but chase the sausage.
1984
The Colonel and the Captain mull over their situation and decide they should probably hand over René and the painting to the Gestapo in order to get rid of Herr Flick. But René convinces them that they could hand over a forged copy of the painting instead (with the assistance of a conveniently-located forger), and gets them to lend their uniforms to the escaping British airmen so they can take the painting to England to be forged. Meanwhile, everyone keeps handing René poison pills "to make it easier", Herr Flick decides his relationship with Helga should include an intimate dinner in Rene's back room, and Hans figures out that putting cheese in one's ears improves the sound of Madame Edith's singing.
1989
The latest escape plan for the British airmen involves them wading along the canal underneath a tin bath. Herr Flick and Von Smallhausen pose as escaped British airmen, hoping to be picked up by the Resistance. The Resistance have built a communication post in René's 'grave', in an effort to get around German jamming of their radio signals. René, Edith and Monsieur Alphonse try it out. René gets caught on the aerial and is hoisted above his 'grave'. Lieutenant Gruber sees him and thinks it's the ghost of René's 'twin brother'.
The sausage containing the painting of the Fallen Madonna, which was taken by Lieutenant Gruber's dog, is minced by the Lieutenant – but fortunately he discovers it first and saves it. At the same time, the missing knockwurst means that Monsieur Alphonse cannot get back the money which he lent to pay the ransom of the stolen sausage. The Resistance pays him back with Monsieur Leclerc's badly forged money. But after everything seems to be getting back to normal, the sausage is sent to Lieutenant Gruber to make another copy. Also, Michelle's latest plan to get the British airmen back is by an old plane with the engine from General Von Klinkerhoffen's motor mower.
After Maria is sent to Lieutenant Gruber with the sausage containing the real painting of the Fallen Madonna for copying, she is caught by General Von Klinkerhoffen, who places the sausage in his wardrobe and holds Maria hostage until his motor mower engine is returned by the Resistance. Herr Flick, the Colonel, the Captain and René hear about this and decide to go to the chateau through the secret passage and steal the sausage from under the General's nose, using Helga, Yvette and Lieutenant Gruber as a honey trap.
With René again in the possession of the sausage containing the painting of the Fallen Madonna, attention turns to getting the two British airmen out of France. Michelle's newest harebrained scheme of getting the airmen out is a steam engine tour through Nouvion, and will of course require eighty metres of braces, and it's René's job to get them from every Frenchman in Nouvion. Herr Flick and Helga arrive in his staff car to spy on the show.
After the plot to get the two British airmen out failed, a frustrated René returns to the painting of the Fallen Madonna. He hides it behind an ugly painting in his café which is immediately recognised by General Von Klinkerhoffen as a Van Gogh and requisitioned for his office in the chateau. He also requisitions the two new maids in Café René – or as they are better known: the two British airmen in disguise. Realising that the two airmen will be recognised right away, Michelle of the Resistance comes up with another harebrained scheme of digging a tunnel from Monsieur Alphonse's mortuary into the prisoner-of-war camp and smuggling in the two airmen.
While the Captain is sitting in the café, Herr Flick of the Gestapo is listening when René is talking to London on the wireless. He soon cracks the code of the message as the plan to dig a tunnel from the mortuary to hide the British airmen. But it's soon apparent that the two airmen and Monsieur Alphonse need help with the digging, and the café staff are called in, leaving Madame Fanny and Leclerc in the café. But the Colonel and the Captain follow René, discover the tunnel, and are captured in the prisoner-of-war camp.
After the Colonel's and the Captain's uniforms are borrowed by the British airmen, and later burned, they have to send for replacements. Supplied by Michelle are carrier pigeons, which Madame Edith accidentally cooks and serves to Herr Otto Flick.
The Colonel, the Captain and Herr Flick are all disguised as onion sellers while the German uniforms are being remade by the Jewish tailors of London. Michelle delivers a bottle of nitro-glycerin disguised as a bottle of Bols Gin to hide in the café until they come to fetch it that night to blow up a German railway.
Hans mistakes the nitro for gin and accidentally blows up the railway himself! The Germans capture René, Yvette, and the peasant-disguised Colonel and Captain. As Helga, Leclerc, and Edith each attempt to help the gang escape, General Von Klinkerhoffen arrives in town and demands that the only known saboteur be shot. This means René's death by firing squad, with Lieutenant Gruber in charge of the squad!
René tries to go back to his normal life after his fake execution, posing as his twin brother, also named René, but the funeral arrangements are difficult when there is no body. Monsieur Leclerc is cheaper than the regular priest and the coffin is filled with anti-tank bombs.
The Communist Resistance want to make a martyr out of the dead René, and kidnap the Colonel and the Captain at the Captain's birthday party. To make matters worse, they offer them on a platter to René's supposed twin brother, so that he can shoot them.
The Colonel's birthday party is the perfect opportunity to retrieve the real painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies from Herr Flick, and substitute it with the forgery. The plan is to not invite Herr Flick but make sure that he hears about the big binge – a traditional feast with genuine Bavarian dances featuring girls dressed as the Hitler Youth – so that he will have to come. In the meantime, René and Edith are to enter the office of Herr Flick to make the switch. Of course, they fail – which means Herr Flick now has both the fake and the original plus a second forgery, which he commissioned in order to fund his marriage with Helga after the war.
The Gestapo and the Italians plan to infiltrate the Resistance. Little do they know that René and friends are waiting for them.
Private Helga Geerhart plans to marry Herr Flick in order to report his every move to General Von Klinkerhoffe
When the British airmen are arrested paddling a tin bath down the estuary, René and his staff are instructed to rescue them from the chateau in coffins. All goes to plan, until Monsieur Alfonse challenges Monsieur Leclerc to a duel.
Michelle of the Resistance plans to infiltrate German headquarters to rescue the British airmen using hijacked German uniforms. But who will fit them? Officer Crabtree thinks René's chances are 'farty to one'.
Café René is the venue for a clandestine deal involving the solid gold cuckoo clock weight, Van Klomp's portrait of the Fallen Madonna and five anonymous characters wearing paper bags over their heads who answer to the names of Colonel X, Lieutenant X, Captain X, Private X and X.
Fanny and Leclerc's wedding is timed to coincide with the execution of Michelle's most audacious escape plan yet.
Michelle comes up with an audacious escape plan for the British airmen involving a barrage balloon and 24 cylinders of helium disguised as prize-winning marrows.
1992
The Colonel and Gruber return from Spain. Meanwhile, Edith is faced with a grave situation.
Having been captured by the communists, René tries to find a way to escape.
René is supposed dead and a parade is held in his honour.
Herr Flick and Von Smallhausen plan to impersonate Yvette and Mimi to search the cafe.
The plans of the Germans conflict with those surrounding Nouvion's Fishmonger's Parade.
René and the café staff prepare to welcome the invading British troops.
1992
René and company disguise themselves as Spanish dancers to recover some radio broadcasts.
Still searching for the Fallen Madonna, Herr Flick gives Helga a truth drug.
It is René's birthday and he gets a series of surprises, not all of which are pleasant.
René has organised a secret wedding with Yvette.
Herr Flick and Von Smallhausen almost meet their maker in front of a firing squad.
Michelle's new plan involves an eel, a dogfish, ten million francs and the Fallen Madonna.
Edith tries to avoid the firing squad by convincing the general that she is not Hitler.
1991
Newly-weds Fanny and Leclerc are sent to jail by the Germans for flying around in a bed attached to a balloon. Edith decides they have to be rescued - much to René's horror. But her plans are thwarted by a loose bed knob.
The Colonel, Gruber and Bertorelli desperately try to stop General Von Flockenstoffen's suicidal plan to kidnap Churchill.
René is to be given a collaboration medal for his help with the removal of Von Flockenstuffen. Unfortunately, this causes the Communist Resistance to place a price on his head. He decides once again to elope with Yvette. Michelle orders René to take the British airmen to the monastery to be picked up by a lightweight plane. Flick also learns of this news, and he and Von Smallhausen have themselves initiated into the brotherhood to gather information and capture the airmen. Unfortunately, René ends up grabbing Edith's hand instead of Yvette's, as the two are rushed aboard the plane bound for England.
René and Edith, transported to England in the place of the British airmen, get medals from Churchill and meet an old friend from the past.
The German officers burgle Gestapo headquarters, but find a ghostly apparition has got there before them.
Michelle enlists René to try to retrieve the Fallen Madonna locked in Herr Flick's safe.
A rescue operation is mounted when the British airmen find themselves trapped in wine barrels in the cellars of the chateau.
Von Klinkerhoffen thinks a marriage between a French woman and a man from the occupying forces would be good propaganda. He orders Edith to marry Bertorelli.
The British airmen are stuck down the drain in the village square, and René plans to get them out using an old ice cream van.
Michelle plans to release the British airmen from the drain in the square under cover of a gypsy fair, but at the last minute the Gypsies cancel.
1987
Having been trapped in the POW camp, René is enlisted in the plan to re-dig the tunnel, by getting rid of the dirt. Von Strohm and Geering are playing cricket, though not very well, and Herr Flick and Von Smallhausen are digging their own tunnel into the camp. Monsieur Alphonse arrives at the café to report to Fanny the news that René has been captured, but René and company join in on the British prisoners' plan to escape – though it will free only one man. Meanwhile, Helga reports the situation to Gruber, and together they devise a plan to rescue the Colonel, the Captain and René - involving Gruber dressing as a nun!
Gorden Kaye
René Artois
Carmen Silvera
Edith Artois
Vicki Michelle
Yvette Carte-Blanche
Richard Marner
Colonel Kurt von Strohm
Kim Hartman
Private Helga Geerhart
Guy Siner
Lieutenant Hubert Gruber
Kirsten Cooke
Michelle Dubois
Dressed as girls from the Folies Bergère, the entire gang (the staff and the Germans) escape from the prisoner-of-war camp, and completely against plans bring the two British airmen with them. Outside again, the Colonel finds that the Captain is missing; only his glasses are found. Herr Flick and Von Smallhousen intercept a message from London and try to send their own, but René catches on and tosses the radio out of the window, which leaves the Resistance without a means to contact London, until Michelle suggests the radio in Lieutenant Gruber's little tank.
Since Maria's disappearance, the café needs another waitress, but René and Edith have somewhat different ideas about who should fill the position, but finally Michelle of the Resistance brings tiny Mimi from another cell to be René's bodyguard. In the meantime, General Von Klinkerhoffen gives the Colonel a new assistant - Italian liaison Captain Bertorelli.
The Gestapo suspects that the Colonel and the General are in on a plot to assassinate Hitler, so Herr Flick goes undercover as Private Irma Von Kinkenrotten and plants a somewhat bizarre daffodil-shaped microphone in the Colonel's office, where Gruber and Von Strohm are making plans to get rid of Bertorelli in some way. Meanwhile, as Edith prepares for her wedding, René and company must get the aerial for their new radio above the jamming signal of Herr Flick, so they disguise Mimi as a small nun to obtain a box kite which they fly to contact London and request plastic explosives to blow up the safe in the General's chateau to get the British Invasion plans.
There are still no batteries for the wireless radio underneath the bed of René's mother-in-law, so Michelle's newest harebrained scheme is to have René and Yvette powering it with the generator from a bicycle until the stolen batteries from a German miniature submarine are delivered. The Lieutenant has finished copying the paintings (The Fallen Madonna and the Van Gogh) and delivers them as sausages. Numerous other sausages also arrive: real ones from Captain Bertorelli, submarine batteries from Leclerc, and explosives from Officer Crabtree, and soon they're all mixed up in the German officers' trousers!
The Germans arrest René, and the Colonel demands an explanation for the knockwursts with explosives in them. After a small lie, René is sent home with around a dozen knockwursts to hang in his kitchen. Meanwhile, the British have sent a spy camera with which the Resistance should be able to photograph the plans for the German invasion of Great Britain, but the camera landed in the vineyard of Monsieur Alphonse, and since the Germans commandeered the vineyard, the Resistance cannot go and look for the camera. This problem is solved when the General orders every peasant in Nouvion to work on the vineyard, which also leaves room for some assassination attempts on the General's life.
Rose Hill
Madame Fanny
Kenneth Connor
Monsieur Alfonse
Arthur Bostrom
Officer Crabtree
1988
Herr Flick is still held in the dungeons, and if he cracks he can divulge that the painting of the Fallen Madonna has been copied. That´s why he must be rescued by Helga, Von Smallhausen, and René - dressed as Himmler. The Colonel and the Lieutenant are ordered by the General to let Herr Flick die in a rescue attempt by the Resistance, but seeing the danger of getting caught in a crossfire, they dress up as Gestapo officers to rescue Herr Flick, only to find René chained up instead.
Starting off in women's underwear in the dungeons of the General's castle, René is rescued by Lieutenant Gruber, and comes back just in time to be briefed by Michelle of the Resistance about the camera which will be used to photograph the safe in the château. That night, Helga and the General are supposed to dine at Café René, but Helga is ordered away by Herr Flick, and the General has to endure Edith's "seduction" before he can get away. René can get into the château, but he doesn't know that the safe is in Lieutenant Gruber's room.
Leclerc and René plan to blow the safe in Lieutenant Gruber's bedroom. Edith's job is to drop a smoke canister down his chimney, but will she get the right one?
Having blown the safe in Lieutenant Gruber's bedroom, René and Leclerc are surprised by its contents. The Communist Resistance lies in wait for their escape, and holds them hostage in a sawmill.
Denise, the head of the Communist Resistance, who was René's sweetheart in his childhood in Nancy, and who's now determined to marry René. Meanwhile, Edith and the servant girls have to explain to the Lieutenant why his little tank has crashed into the public toilet, and ends up getting Gruber's compassion. René has a difficult time telling Edith that he will marry Denise, since Monsieur Alphonse has asked for Edith's hand, and Yvette has it in her heart to tell Edith that René will marry her instead.
René's friends rally round to try and save him from his impending marriage to the formidable leader of the Communist Resistance.
René disguises himself as his father in order to escape the wrath of Denise Laroque.
René and the Resistance find another novel way to return the British airmen to England.
René and his staff prepare the long-distance duck for its vital flight to England.
Monsieur Leclerc comes to the rescue when orders are given for René to be arrested. René tries to escape using a unique disguise.
René is in even more trouble as the generals gather round at the chateau.
A medal for bravery, a suicide pill and a hide-out in the Vatican introduce an old habit to René.
René and the Resistance need to find a huge amount of money quickly to save Mimi from the Communists.
When it is revealed that the one million francs stolen from the bank belong to Herr Flick of the Gestapo, the best place to hide them seems to be down René's trousers.
René has got rid of the Gestapo's money, next is the secret microfilm, but he is hampered by the Communist Resistance girls in the cupboard.
While under interrogation, Alfonse's dicky ticker starts playing up, and he is whisked to hospital. He must be either rescued or eliminated before he can spill the beans about the stolen Gestapo money.
Michelle and Crabtree hatch another plot to get the British airmen back to Blighty. Captain Bertorelli has stolen Gestapo money planted on him.
Edith is in a romantic mood, and René is playing the piano.
Faced with the problem of hiding 1,000 kilos of stolen high explosive, Michelle of the Resistance decides on a simple but daring course of action. It will be hidden in 500 Christmas puddings.
Not only does René nearly get blown up by an exploding Christmas pudding, he also gets roped into another Resistance plan to smuggle out the British airmen.
René tries to sneak off to Switzerland with Yvette on the night train.
René attempts to sneak off to Switzerland with Yvette and four gold bars, but discovers the Resistance are intending to blow up their train.
Chaos engulfs René as he attempts to hide the stolen gold. Meanwhile, the Resistance plan to steal the Enigma encoder.
René asks Edith to marry him after hearing Monsieur Alphonse's intentions of asking for her hand in marriage. Meanwhile, General Von Klinkerhoffen suspects Colonel Von Strohm of stealing his gold, while Herr Flick suspects René.
René is still hiding the four bars of gold he has stolen and decides it is time he left his dangerous life in Nouvion.
René is still harbouring the German Enigma machine as well as the four bars of gold he has stolen, two British airmen and the painting of the Cracked Vase with the Big Daisies by Van Gogh. So the café is now full and getting more crowded by the minute.
