Belgian Chess History

Luther sounds like it should be a documentary series about the eponymic theologist and his ninety-five theses, or perhaps about his royal namesake. But no. It is about a certain John Luther, played by Idris Elba, who works as a detective in London. Yes, we are back to the good old crime series. Obviously, chess pops up. In fact, it pops up where it should: in the first episode of the first season, right after the opening credits have ended. That way, you can skip the rest of the series.¹

Read more

A prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany is a rather unlikely setting for a comedy sitcom and perhaps it would be hard to get it greenlit nowadays. But back in the sixties this was apparently not a problem, because not only did Hogan’s heroes run for six seasons, it also won two Emmy awards. Robert Hogan is the main character, who leads secret operations for the allied forces from a prisoner camp. The camp is lead by Wilhelm Klink,¹ assisted by an incredibly stupid sergeant with the stereotypically German name of Schultz. Klink and Hogan have a weird relationship, where Klink has a grudging respect for Hogan but thinks himself smarter and Hogan has a friendly contempt for Klink and knows himself smarter. At the beginning of the twenty first episode of the fourth season, the two are facing off on the chessboard.

Read more

If you read this blog, there is a good chance you like dissecting chess positions that occur in movies or television series. But maybe you don’t like spending watching movies. Well, then I have the episode for you! Just a couple of minutes in, the credits are barely over, before a single person has died, we see a game of chess being played. As it turns out, the people in the picture below are participants in a clinical trial for a new anti-depressive drug.

Read more

The untouchables were originally a special team of incorruptible agents tasked with fighting organised crime in Chicago. It then became the title of an autobiographically book by one of them, which in turn was made into a massively popular television series. In the third episode of the fourth season, Eliot Ness, who usually takes on Al Capone and gangsters of that ilk, fights Ira Bauer, one of the most hardened criminals in the city, one of the greatest threats to not just to Chicago but to all of the United States: someone who sells champagne. Yeah, prohibition was pretty stupid.

Read more

Peep show is a critically acclaimed sitcom that cemented David Mitchell and Robert Webb as one of the great comedic duos in British television. It is about Mark, a miserable man eking out a miserable existence working a miserable job for a miserable boss. The worst part of his life is his room mate. A good example of why this is, is provided by the third episode of the third season: Shrooming. Jez — that’s the room mate¹ — decides tries to get a desperately sick Mark to go on a business trip so that he can do magic mushrooms in their apartment with his love interest and some punk who has previously destroyed the door to their toilet.

Read more

Today, we will talk about a group of weirdos with strange customs, largely shunned by society but quite happy on their own. No, not chess players, the Addams family. We will talk about the very last episodes from the first season of the original series. The plot starts when uncle Fester reads some ridiculous report by a psychologist¹ in a newspaper stating that couples that fight are really the happy ones. This worries him, because Gomez and Morticia Addams never fight and always seem to delight in each other’s company. At some point, they are even playing chess:

Read more