PBS Masterpiece Classics - BBC World on Fire
 

Masterpiece Classics is great stuff. The BBC and PBS seem to be really interested in “period pieces” and in particular, dramas set in WW2 or, less so WW1.

Grantchester was great fun, partly because it only dealt with the British “home side” of the war but shows like “World on Fire” are starting to drive me a bit nuts.

It’s all very well done, generally, but I start to wonder lately about the constant theme of German characters being portrayed, very thinly, as being either stupid and incompetent bullet fodder or merciless Nazi ass holes whenever dramas like "World on Fire" delve into the actualities of war.

The only Germans portrayed as complex, tangible human beings are those that are seen as struggling against the Nazis and coming to the aid, actually or emotionally to the sentiments of the allies.

On "World on Fire" we have Polish resistance chicks with pistols taking out German infantry carrying Mauser carbines at many paces and seducing officers to their death from cafes and Bond-like British agents parachuting into Warsaw on a DC3 flight from London (set aside that the Luftwaffe pretty much owned European airspace during 1940).

In particular, I love the exchange with a Nazi patrol as it comes across the parachuted British agent walking down a rural road.

Nazis (with carbines): “did you hear that plane last night?”;

British agent: “no”, walking away.

Nazi (thinking “well I guess he’s ok - he didn’t hear the plane and he did complement me on my Polish language skills”) but the Nazi suddenly has second thoughts and asks: “hey, wait, what’s in the back pack?”.

British agent: “my clothes!”.

The agent then whips out a silenced pistol (silenced - really?) and guns down both Nazis at 10 metre range and then performs the satisfying coup de gras of the bullet in the head for the just-wounded Nazi lying on the ground.

Set aside also any reference to the Geneva convention – the allies can do whatever they want and are righteous in doing so. Civilian non-combatants can execute Nazi officers at will and yet only receive a sort of delayed execution sentence (like in a Bond movie) which conveniently allows just enough time for their compatriots to come to their rescue to set them free to execute Nazis another day.

I find this show (as others) to be both an insult to the actual tragedy experienced by the Nazi occupied nations as much as an insult to the immense capability of the Nazi war machine, particularly early days, not to mention the humanity of the people involved on both sides.

Maybe I take my fiction too seriously, but why not let fiction be fiction and history be history?

I need to watch this show.

It ain't no Tarentino - don't get your hopes up.

History, and questionable historic dramas are written by the winners....

Grantchester???? That took place well into the 1950's. Nothing to do with the war.

Good series, though. (Better early, declining in later series.)

Maybe you confused it with another series.

"Foyle's War" was a good 'during the war' series.