Days That Shook the World

A decent, and not melodramatically over-done recreation of the end of two presidencies. However, two glaring errors--easily avoidable by less than five minutes of on-line research--leave an impression of amateurism. 1) When covering the priest giving Last Rites to President Kennedy, the narrator, instead of saying he is giving him "extreme unction" (a term still used those days) or "last anointing", says "salvation". 2) At least two times a photo or short footage of Sen. Sam Ervin, who headed the Senate Watergate Committee, is shown and the name of the special prosecutor in the Watergate case (a quite distinct office), Leon Jaworksi, is given. Not even haste or budget constraints can excuse such slipshod journalism. I will still watch more episodes for the sake of the overall effectiveness of the depictions, but will have to keep an eye out for occasional misinformation.

I have seen very few documentaries that have come even close to reconstructing the factual recreations shown during this historical event. the time frame filmed clearly defines each series of events, describing the development, decision, planning, briefing and execution of this operation. personal accounts include crew members of the enola gay, stating their thoughts and observations during this epic mission. within the film's content, each viewer can relive the entire flight from take off to landing. nearing the target, precautions taken and evasive procedures, provide a clear insight to reliving this secret mission. in the aftermath of this city, taking into account the total loss of live and destruction, gives true testimony to actual destructive power to this new era weapon.

The other comments on this series only cover the 'Hiroshima' episode. In fact the series covers a large number of Historic 'days' including the Wright Brothers' Flight, the Assassinations of Kennedy and Lincoln, the Death of Primncess Diana and the declaration of the state of Israel. The original series had hour long episodes with two thematically-related 'days' (e.g. the Wright Brothers and the First Moon Landing'. Later on there were half-hour episodes on single days and a few hour-long specials (on e.g. the 1967 Middle East War and the 1918 Armistice.). The overall standard of the series is high and I use many of them in my High School teaching. In this regard I would rate the best as : the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Murder of the Romanovs and Kristallnacht. Other excellent episodes, not so immediately useful for my teaching, include the death of Diana, the Moon landing and the resignation of President Nixon. Unfortunately some of the episodes clearly suffer from budgetary constraints. The St Valentine's Day Massacre episode appears to have been filmed in mid-Summer, while the Theft of The Crown Jewels features only half a dozen actors. A couple of potentially good episodes are spoiled by poor casting. I know that it's not always possible to get good lookalikes for Historic figures but they couldn't have chosen actors less like their real-life counterparts to play Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten in the Indian Independence episode. Jinnah, for example, a slight, elderly and dying man is played by a young, tall and well-built actor in very unconvincing 'old' makeup. These quibbles aside I would recommend the series, available in the UK in a boxed DVD set, to teachers and anyone interested in how History happened.