Nochnye lastochki

Known to the Germans by the less affectionate name 'Night Witches', the all-girl wartime women's flying unit the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment had already been the subject of a feature film, 'Night Witches in the Sky' (1981), before this glamorous hybrid of soap opera and war movie.

The missions are led every week by snub-nosed Tatyana Arntgolts as Zhenya Zvonareva, and there is the usual restlessness to get stuck into the enemy and reprimands from their commanders for not always going by the rule book. Apart from Elizaveta Nilova as Galya Shevchenko we see little of the rest of the squadron, and on the rare occasions the unit suffers casualties their fate is signalled in advance in time honoured 'Star Trek' fashion by introducing new flyers to the latest sortie who don't return.

As the series progresses there is increasing competing emphasis on dashing Alexander Makeev's (Denis Nikiforov) guerillas and his burgeoning romance with Zhenya, and the action comes increasingly to take place on the ground, as when they make short work in Episode Six of Germany's answer to The Dirty Dozen disguised in Russian uniforms.

While not a technically great film, The Night Swallows is worth watching if you are at all interested in military aviation and female aviation history. The film gives a basic insight into a brave group of female pilots, referred to as the Night Witches by the German military, who flew outdated aircraft on night harassment missions. A little frustrating was that the entire film is be based on a relatively short period during a single winter. No matter, it remains worth watching as it appears to be the only film or series available on the Night Witches.

I didn't know much about the "Night Witches". I was just looking up WWII stuff on Amazon to watch ad saw this remembering I heard something about this topic.

The acting was good with believable performances. The storylines too didn't drag, and there were definitely red herrings in it (don't want to spoil this).

As far as the cons, I have a few but they aren't really huge cons. There are voiceovers in Russian as the Germans are speaking in German. It was a bit distracting and annoying especially since I was reading subtitles anyway. I also don't know if it was supposed to be funny, but I kept laughing every time a German would say something like "Those DA** witches!". "Get me 1 witch!", and really anything about the witches lol. Additionally some storylines were a bit difficult to follow. That may be due to things getting lost in translation. I also wish that would have given the supporting actresses more of a storyline as the focus was really just on the 2 main actresses. Lastly, the ending just ended. That may be the American in me though who likes closure. I've noticed with non American movies that they just pick a time to end it and it's not all put together nicely. I was just left with what is going to happen to so and so.

Anyway I enjoyed it and binged watched it all in 1 day!

Excellent television series of very high technical and narrative quality. All the characters are highly believable, and the setting is very well recreated. It's a great approach to the mythical figures of these female Russian aviators, specialized in nighttime bombing during the sadly notorious WW2 Russian campaign.

Despite being a TV production, using relative technical and financial resources, the result is of extremely high cinematic quality, on par with the best multimillion-dollar Hollywood productions. This series, similar to the American "Band of Brothers" but with a much lower budget, faithfully brings to life the wartime atmosphere of a group of soldiers, this time women, and their human experiences in a context as tremendous as war. For those who want to delve deeper into the subject, I recommend watching the film "V nebe 'Nochnye vedmy'" from 1981, which is about the same group of women aviators.

Interesting and enjoyable. War series are always difficult to portray in scale, technically, and in context; however, I appreciated the telling of the experiences and perspective of these unique pilots.