Television Review: Otpisani (The Written Off, 1974 - 1975)
The Yugoslav television series Otpisani (The Written-Off), which aired its thirteen episodes between December 1974 and March 1975, occupies a singular position in the cultural memory of the former country. To dismiss it, as post-Communist critics have occasionally done, as mere state-sanctioned agitprop is to fundamentally misunderstand its achievement. For whilst the series undeniably operated within the ideological parameters of Tito's Yugoslavia, it succeeded in reinvigorating the Partisan genre for a generation whose sensibilities had been shaped by Western cinema, pop music, and the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Its enduring popularity stems from a remarkable synthesis of historical authenticity, populist entertainment, and—perhaps most surprisingly—a willingness to embrace the moral complexity and human cost of underground resistance.
The series' pilot, Bolnica ("The Hospital"), establishes immediately that this would be no solemn, Soviet-style monument to revolutionary sacrifice. Dragan Marković and Siniša Pavić's script, directed with kinetic efficiency by Aleksandar Đorđević, grounds its narrative in the experiences of young Communist Youth members in occupied Belgrade, yet the presentation is deliberately contemporary. Milivoje Marković's jazz-inflected score, more evocative of American blaxploitation films than of Soviet orchestral marches, signals a conscious attempt to make the foundational myth of Communist Yugoslavia "hip" to its youth audience. The protagonists—Tihi (Voja Brajović), the serious, middle-class strategist, and Prle (Dragan Nikolić), the impulsive, streetwise charmer—are motivated less by Marxist-Leninist ideology than by personal honour, camaraderie, and rebellion against foreign oppression.
This modernising impulse, however, never entirely abandons historical grounding. The hospital raid depicted in the premiere is a composite of real resistance actions, specifically the July 1941 liberation of Politbureau member Aleksandar Ranković (here transformed into a female prisoner due to Ranković's subsequent political disgrace). Similarly, Garaža ("The Garage") dramatises an actual sabotage operation—the torching of a German motor pool on 26 July 1941—whilst incorporating authentic details such as the public hangings on Terazije and the accidental deaths of bomb-makers. The series' strength lies in this grafting of compelling fiction onto a robust trunk of historical fact, creating what might be termed mythopoeic rather than documentary realism.
The trajectory of the series' first season traces a deliberate darkening of tone. The early episodes, whilst never shying away from the brutality of occupation, maintain a pulp-adventure energy: Prle and Tihi infiltrate German installations, steal uniforms from bathhouses, and execute daring escapes through Belgrade's sewers. Pečurke ("Mushrooms") exemplifies this approach, balancing genuine suspense with bedroom farce as Prle seduces a minister's housemaid to access vital documents.
However, by the ninth episode, Paja Bakšiš, the series executes a devastating narrative turn. The death of Paja (Miki Manojlović), one of the original five protagonists, shatters any illusion of invulnerability. His sacrifice—holding off German pursuers so Tihi can escape with intelligence—is arguably the most emotionally resonant moment in the entire series. This is heroism not as triumphant spectacle but as brutal necessity, rendered all the more poignant by the character's earlier good-natured resilience.
Vlada Rus escalates this attrition to near-nihilistic levels. Five operatives perish in a single episode, including Dragana (Zlata Numanagić), whose disobedience of Tihi's explicit orders proves fatal. The romantic subplot between Vlada Rus and Colonel Müller's daughter never transcends perfunctory filler, and the deaths often feel arbitrary rather than meaningful—errors born of desperation rather than grand sacrifice. Yet this very bleakness serves a purpose: it exposes the resistance movement as a grinding machine that consumes its own with ruthless efficiency, fundamentally at odds with the romanticised "Boy's Own" adventure that critics often mistakenly attribute to the series.
Two episodes stand out as masterpieces of Yugoslav television. Kanal ("The Sewer"), the sixth instalment, transforms what begins as a seeming rehash of earlier sewer-based escapes into a masterclass in tension. Director Đorđević's insistence on shooting in actual sewage tunnels lends the proceedings a visceral authenticity impossible to replicate on sets. The concurrent threats—German pursuers and the bureaucratically routine flooding of the sewers by water authorities—create a primal struggle for survival against indifferent forces. Tihi's decision to sacrifice himself by splitting the group, followed by his near-death and rescue, represents the moral zenith of the series: quiet nobility rather than swaggering heroism.
Even more significant is Poštar ("The Postman"), the eighth episode, which introduced Jovan "Joca" Perić (Pavle Vuisić), a middle-aged postman recruited for a train sabotage mission. Vuisić's performance—grumpy, wounded in masculine pride, yet ultimately capable of extraordinary courage—proved so magnetic that the producers were compelled to restructure the entire franchise around him. The 1976 feature film Povratak otpisanih and the 1978 sequel series formally elevated Joca to protagonist status, a textbook example of what American television criticism would later term "Fonzie Syndrome." The episode's meticulous procedural detail—the construction of a timer, the acquisition of explosives, the infiltration using postal uniforms—demonstrates the series at its most Hitchcockian, deriving suspense from careful preparation rather than chaotic action.
Where Otpisani stumbles is in its manipulation of historical record to suit contemporary political needs. Banjički logor ("Banjica Camp") depicts a 1941 raid on the notorious concentration camp that is pure fiction; the real escapes occurred in 1943 and involved inconvenient historical figures including both Communist officials and Chetnik officers. Similarly, Provala ("Breach") fictionalises the 1943 intelligence catastrophe involving Janko Janković and Vera Miletić (mother of Mira Marković, future wife of Slobodan Milošević), transforming a sordid tale of torture and betrayal into a heroic last stand.
These sanitised narratives reveal the series' underlying contract with state ideology. The Holocaust is acknowledged—Tihi's Jewish girlfriend Nina lives in terror of the yellow star, printers Zare and Nenad choose suicide over capture—but always through the prism of Communist resistance. The collaborationist Special Police and Gestapo are depicted as efficient professionals (particularly Stevo Žigon's magnificent Major Krieger, whose real-life experience as a resistance member and Dachau survivor adds layers of irony), yet the series cannot fully explore the complex motivations of Serbian quislings under occupation.
The final episode, Brodogradilište ("The Shipyard"), resolves this tension between ideological prescription and popular demand. Creator Marković originally envisioned each episode ending with the death of a principal character, a relentlessly fatalistic approach appropriate to Socialist Realist martyrology. Instead, the finale affirms survival. Prle and Tihi, the last remnants of their cell, execute a vengeful settling of scores with fascist turncoats before undertaking their final mission: the destruction of the Belgrade shipyard.
Their narrow escape—wounded, exhausted, pursued through industrial labyrinths—feels earned rather than guaranteed. The survival of both protagonists and their primary antagonist Krieger (permitted a moment of uncharacteristic romantic dalliance with his secretary Elsa) was a concession to audience demand already manifest before the initial airing concluded. The melancholic final image of Čibi playing the series' theme on his harmonica suggests not triumph but weary continuation, a battered persistence that resonated with viewers who had followed these characters through thirteen weeks of escalating tragedy.
Otpisani transcends its propagandist origins through sheer craftsmanship and an unexpected commitment to the human cost of resistance. Its modern aesthetic—from funky score to anti-establishment protagonists—distinguished it from the monumental Partisan epics of the 1960s, whilst its willingness to kill beloved characters elevated it above mere adventure serials. The series offered a Yugoslav audience both escapist thrills and sobering tragedy, mythologising their history without entirely falsifying its brutal essence. In the figure of Joca Perić and the evolving dynamic between Prle and Tihi, it created television icons that outlived the state that commissioned them. For all its historical liberties and ideological constraints, Otpisani remains a landmark of 1970s European television—a proof that the small screen could produce war heroes as compelling, and often more human, than any big-screen counterpart.
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