The axiom in joking is, a person's favourite joke is the key to that person's character; and so it is for a culture (however, you won't trick me into discussing with you Australian culture which is mainly agriculture and horticulture).
Instead, I want to tell you about the failed attempt to introduce a German version of Fawlty Towers to the Germans. A pilot episode of the show, called 'Zum Letzten Kliff' ('To the Last Cliff'), was broadcast in December 2001. In it, Basil and Sybil became Victor and Helga, an unhappily-married couple who presided over a chaotically awful hotel called 'Zum letzten Kliff' which was relocated to a North Sea island called Sylt (pronounced 'Zoolt'). The hotel also featured a young waitress called Polly, while the Manuel character was reinvented as a waiter named Igor from the Republic of Kazakhstan.
It never caught on in Germany, perhaps because it didn't include the phrase which anyone who has seen the original now uses to sum up the terrible anxiety we all have about trying, and failing, to not say the wrong thing: 'Don't mention the war!' It was so tasteless, it was hilarious.
I don't care if you don't care for it. Who won the bloody war, anyway?
