Britain's Great War

It looks like we shall get an onslaught of documentaries relating to the Great War over the next four years.

Each one of them will have us believe that us ordinary mortals have been brainwashed by the writers of Blackadder goes Forth that the war was futile.

To the uninitiated, Blackadder was a comedy show where the last episode of each series ended in a blood bath. The writers of the show knowing some of the veterans of the war were still alive decided to go for a more poignant conclusion.

No history was rewritten. You know that from the poetry written by actual soldiers who fought in the war.

Jeremy Paxman is the first out of the blocks with his part polemic take on the Great War. Little is said about the causes of the war apart from a sentence: 'The Kaiser wants to invade Russia and France and hasn't responded to Britain's 11-00 pm deadline.'

Paxman does not give us an in depth analysis of each battle of the war, the slaughter, trench warfare or even inform us as to why many people thought it would be all over by Christmas.

Paxman refuses to enter the argument that other historians have made that the Generals knew the war was going to be only won by sacrificing thousands and thousands of men in the battle field.

What we get is a bite size history lesson digestible to a BBC1 audience of a human take on the war. We see how ordinary people were affected by the war, how many volunteered to fight, how the propaganda machine was cranked up so people would join up.

We do hear stories of the war being fought in the trenches, the social and economic effect the war had in British society during and after the war. We see the heart rendering development of modern plastic surgery as disfigured soldiers are made to look more palatable.

In the final episode we see a funeral service of some soldiers found in a foreign field and we see Paxman talking to their relatives who convey how real the war is to them even a hundred years later as a circle is closed.

It is a contextual history series, some of the stories were offbeat or felt inconsequential. I am sure it not the final word on the subject.

This is a very adequate mini-series. Reviewers should try to understand that it is about Britain's Great War, not about 'THE' Great war. Paxman (of whom I was never a great fan) tries to show how the war impacted Britain, not why the war happened, how it happened, where it happened, who it happened to - but how it impacted GREAT Britain, try to understand that. If you watch this within that context then you probably wont be disappointed.

That said, it's adequate, not a masterpiece, not excellent - but very adequate. If you want a definitive series on the Great war, then watch "The Great War" - a classic unsurpassed series.

As a previous reviewer has stated, the documentary starts out with a curt two or three sentence summation of how the war started. This is unfortunate because after watching "37 Days" a few days ago (a mini-series on the 37 days that led up to the war) it is quite an interesting story.

The rest of the documentary focuses almost solely on social changes that the war brought. It never really mentions any other country that was fighting with it, their relationship, how the decisions of one country effected another, etc. There was no mention of art, poetry, songs that were written, or anything of that sort, even though it was "vast." I only say "vast" and use it in my title because the narrator uses the word constantly. It gets annoying.

If an uneducated soul watched this documentary you would that Britain won the war on its own. No mention of Australians or Canadians until after the war is over and they "took to Trafalgar Square and lit a bonfire." Not one mention of America or Russia (Russia lost more men than any other country fighting the Nazis, it is worth at least a mention, no?).

They treat the sinking of the Lusitania as if nuns were aboard, instead of munitions. And they forget to mention that she was breaking international "Cruise Rules" by doing so, and was therefore fair game for the Germans.

It also speaks of the rich going off to war as if they had more to lose and therefore were more of a hero than a poor person enlisting. It also mentions that the rich kids became the leaders automatically and that it was somehow "bad" because they had a higher death rate. Maybe they had a higher death rate because they were soft and weak, who knows? It also said the poor were much better off for the war because they were given "meat every day." Like it was some sort of charity and that poor people should be grateful for being shot at.

And then it ended. Just "and finally after four years, the war ended." It seemed sudden.

Overall, not that great.