I woke up this morning humming the theme song from “Czterej pancerni i pies” (Four Tankmen And a Dog). Don’t ask me why – I must have had some really wacky dreams last night. Mercifully, I remember nothing. So how did this song get stuck in my head this morning? A total mystery to me.

It’s an even greater mystery that I still remember all the words to it. And that is truly scary – the last time I heard this song was sometime in 1981.

Oh wait! You have no clue what I’m talking about, now do you?
Sorry, my bad! Let me explain.

“Czterej pancerni i pies” was a Polish TV series from the late 60s. It was based on a book by Janusz Przymanowski and was about, well, four guys in a tank and their dog. And you could say that as far as Polish TV series go, this one was very successful. So successful in fact, that it achieved a cult status, of sorts, in Poland. Even though only 21 episodes had been made, they’d been rerun and rerun ad nauseam – every year to be exact, up until, oh maybe 1989. Then after the fall of communism, people suddenly got better things to watch on TV, yet still “Czterej pancerni…” remained popular.

It was reissued on DVD in 2000 and apparently the DVD version even has English subtitles. I’ve been hunting for it, but so far – no luck.

I suppose you could ask any random Pole (even one born after 1980) if they’re familiar with Rudy, Szarik and the tank crew, and I betcha they’d say “yes”.
Rudy was the name of their tank, and Szarik was their dog.

The series was full of pro-Soviet propaganda, but it also depicted WW2 with a humorous slant and was simply action-filled fun. And if you consider the times and the production value, you realize it was also superbly made.

It’s become fashionable lately to slam it for the way it portrayed Polish-Russian friendships or the glories of the Soviet Army, though if you watch closely, you’ll notice that the creators had managed to sneak in a few critical bits past the communist censors of the day, as well.

For all its shortcomings, it was a great series. It had friendship, love, humor, action and a dog. And who could NOT love Szarik the German shepherd?

Other than the dog, what evidently got stuck in my head is the opening song “Deszcze niespokojne” (“Restless Rains”) by Edmund Fetting. Don’t worry, I won’t sing it for you, if I did, I doubt I’d be allowed to continue writing this blog. Instead, you can listen to the opening theme here.

Words for today:

  • serial (noun, masculine, non-person, plural: seriale) = series
  • telewizyjny (adjective, masculine) = television as an adjective.

So if you add these together, you’ll get:

  • serial telewizyjny = TV series