"Christopher and His Kind" Reveals the Seedy (and Playful) Side of Berlin

Lazy days in the sun give way to more sinister themes.

While we still don't have a date in the U.S. for the Christopher Isherwood biopic starring Doctor Who's Matt Smith, BBC 2 aired it this weekend in all its glory. We had shown you the trailer before, but new clips bring to the fore just what an epic arc of history is being told here.

From Isherwood's wide-eyed arrival at the Cosy Corner in this first clip, we find a vibrant gay scene that wouldn't feel terribly out of place today, though the bar certainly has more ambiance than most I've been in lately.

We move on to romance and the freewheeling sexuality of Berlin in the 1930s, with the eternal struggle of whether to be exclusively together... or to play with all that the world around you has to offer.

Passion is passion, be it fueled by vanity, lust, or anger. There's something entirely foreign and yet utterly familiar about this scene with Christopher and Casper. And it is passionate in a way that the stills and the shorter clips didn't convey. Seems to me that Caspar would fit right in on The A-List were he alive in our time.

And as we move further along, things turn dark as Hitler gains power in a Germany struggling to feed the populace and growing increasingly fearful of outsiders.

I know I truly want to see Christopher and His Kind when it makes its way across the pond.