37 Days

You don't need to be interested in history to be absorbed by the most important 37-days in history. Days that led to the WW1, WW2, and everything thereafter. Fabulous production!

If you are a history buff, 10/10 and compulsory viewing.

The main reason behind this mini-series was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of WW1, so this programme certainly had an educational purpose behind it. Unfortunately, the only saving grace of this rather clumsy attempt to tell the story was the brilliant performance of Ian McDiarmid, who despite being far too old to play Sir Edward Grey, was astonishingly convincing in the role. As has been mentioned by other reviewers, the continental characters were very poorly played, with some over the top hysterics from Kaiser Wilhelm and Von Moltke in particular -shouting and gesticulations taking the place of cogent discussion. The actors playing the Kaiser and the Tsar, in particular, looked nothing like the genuine individuals, and tried to make up for it with poor acting. There was also very little from the Austro-Hungarians, other than their ambassador coming up with poor excuses whilst being reprimanded like a naughty schoolboy by Sir Edward. The other continental characters conformed very much to national stereotypes. Finally, three hours did seem rather too much to explain the events - a single, edited two hour programme would have been much better. The first two episodes contained some periods of rather unnecessary tedium, only redeemed by the third one.

The writers of this lousy propaganda have never read any history book, so all series is full of dunno what. Wilhelm wears Iron Cross before the war - it is awarded only in wartime. Similarly, Nicholas wears St George. He was awarded 4th grade only 1915. He has stripes on trousers - in Russian army it is only for generals, and Nicholas was just a Colonel. German uniforms are not correct. Edward Grey acts and speaks as football hooligan. As the rest of British statesmen. Clerks in foreign offices are half-dressed - nobody would allow to show up wearing only a vest. Etc. Generally - watch with shock and awe. Then go to dark corner and weep about decline of education and civilization.

I am not clued in enough to say, with certainty, this BBC drama was impartial - but given how i suppose it could have gone, i think it was close enough. Even if you don't agree, you cannot fault the acting and the direction of this mini series.

Loosely told from the perspective of two foreign office clerks - one German, one British - depicts the many sad, unfortunate and ironic events in the 37 days leading to the deaths of ten million men and women around the globe during WW1.

I am of a generation of kids whose history lessons saw WW1 being completely overshadowed in favour of WW2 - so for me this was particularly interesting. It could have been poorly acted, badly directed and cheap to make and I would still have found it interesting. That it was none of those things was a great bonus! It was obvious from the outset that while they were speaking in English, the German actors were German, the Russian actors Russian and so on. Which added some authenticity to the whole thing (I am a stickler for accents!).

If you want 3 hours of world history and a good account of the bumbling old gits that ran Germany and Great Britain at the time - give this a go :)

This series shows how WW1 started. Nobody actually wanted war, but everybody thought someone else will stop it. When it started, there was no way back.