Hash-smoking soldier puppets in Afghanistan may have been too controversial for public broadcaster DR’s Christmas lineup

A satirical puppet show about Danish troops in Afghanistan that was to be part of public broadcaster DR’s Christmas lineup has now been dropped by the station, which stated the programme was ‘not funny enough’.

But the writers and directors for the show, H*A*S*H – along with many critics who saw the pilot episode – believe there may be political motivations behind DR’s decision. The episode was shown in August during a TV festival, but DR made no comments about the show not being funny at the time.

‘I don’t know whether this is censorship or not but it’s very strange,’ said Christian Dyekjær, H*A*S*H’s director. ‘I also don’t know whether it was a political decision, but I can’t help thinking it could be.’

Lolita Bellstar, co-author of the show’s manuscript, believes recent censorship cases may have influenced DR’s decision to drop H*A*S*H.

‘Police recently withheld video from their evacuation of Brorson’s Church and just this week the military attempted to prevent a elite soldier’s book from being published,’ she said. ‘It’s a very worrying development and extremely unfortunate.’

Arne Notkin, DR’s station manager, said that while the series would not be shown as part of DR’s Christmas lineup, it is possible that it would be run at another point in time.

The Red-Green Alliance party is calling for an investigation into the matter to determine whether DR’s decision was politically influenced.