Landships II

compound eye · Colonel

Our World War - BBC Three

jellytwig · Lieutenant

I couldn't agree more! An excellent portrayal of the events with a real sense of immediacy to it. OK, the bridge and canal were not the actual scene of events, but that didn't detract from its veracity. I hadn't seen it advertised or I would have recorded it. Two more episodes to follow? Well done, BBC !

James H · Legend

Sorry I missed that. I'm happy that it comes recommended. Sometimes you dread what you're going to see in docos like this. Even Paxman fell for a few chestnuts in the ones he did earlier this year.

compound eye · Colonel

Repeated Sunday at 9pm and Monday in the wee small hours.

Next episode on Thursday evening.

Tank based episode, therefore, in two thursday's time.

My understanding is that it is portraying 'snapshots' from the Great War, based on contemporary accounts and real combatants. So there is no story arc, but three individual hard-hitting aspects from the war.

James H · Legend

Ta.

Gwyn Evans · Legend

I also saw it, slightly by accident, and was very impressed. I found the use of modern music bewildering at first and I wasn't sure about some of the dialogue either, but if it made it accessible to BBC3's target demographic (which my children tell me I don't belong to) then no harm done in my view. I thought it a very powerful, well acted and compelling piece of TV - the best thing I've seen on the Great War so far this year and possibly the best docu-drama I've ever seen, though I should say that that particular genre is not one that normally attracts me.

Gwyn

compound eye · Colonel

I had initially dismissed it, based on the head-cam shots in the trailers over the last few weeks... and was going to stick to Family Guy fart jokes, BUT post-pub on Friday night I got hooked and was glad of the chance to have at it.

All the things that would probably appeal to the Boob-3 demographic seemed to be pretty well judged in my opinion.

A few effs and jeffs here and there and modern coloquialisms, well - Tommies, all walks of life... not just croquest playing aristos, so it didn't jar for me. I'm sure we'd all recognise a lot more early 20th C expressions that we think.

The modern music? I thought it really added to the urgency of it and was infinitely preferable to yet more bloody slow-mo bullet riddlings to Barber's Adagio, or marshalling / advances with trumpy great clods of Elgar. I think the music actually helped make the point that a lot of Tommies were no more than kids who wouldn't have been as stuffy or 'discerning' as the breech wearing moustache twiddlers popular culture usually depicts.

I cannot wait to watch it again tonight, and the new one on Thursday - which is supposed to have quite a brutal story line. One can only hope it lives up to part i, and that part iii with the TANK is worth holding out for.

Gwyn Evans · Legend

You misunderstand my comment about the dialogue. I didn't object to the swearing at all - in fact there should have been more of it, at least amongst the Other Ranks. No, I just felt that there was too little dialogue that was of its time. No mention of anything that people in 1914 might have talked about - the current entertainers, horseracing and gambling, politics, anything that was of its time. I also felt we didn't really get an insight into the junior officers' perspective - their background, youth and inexperience of life, though I did miss the first five minutes.

As for replacing the music with Elgar or whatever, well definitely not, but I'd have preferred it left out altogether.

Gwyn

compound eye · Colonel

Ah right, I see. I am not sure there was time for much background or period dialogue embelishments... Short sharp shock seemed to be the style they were after.

mike_m · Major

It was obviously very much in the modern style of things, presumably to try and catch the attention of the demographic of the channel, much of it looked like a computer game. Having said that I did think it was good and certainly worth watching

Mike

compound eye · Colonel

Part Two tonight chaps - BBC3 9pm 'Our World War' - 'Pals'.

James H · Legend

Part 1 got generally favourable reviews, except in The Daily Telegraph, which gave it 2/5. There were aspects of it I could have done without - Gwyn is right about the target audience, but it concerns me a little that the metal-ish music makes it feel like another computer game. It didn't help to explain who the men were, where they came from, and what the world looked like to them.

Talking of which, tonight's episode is "interactive." A good thing?

compound eye · Colonel

Interactive online. TV was straight drama.

I can see that the presentation is never going to please everyone, but I thought part two - tonight - was bloody brilliant also.

Next week's 'War Machine' looks pretty amazing too. Of course, next week is where we really get to go "nah, not enough rivets... those paint chips didn't fly off the inside of the armour correctly.", BUT I cannot see how part three is going to be any less on-the-money than what we've seen so far.

I really hope the BBC do a walloping good DVD release of this with extras, by which I don't mean some big thespian 'empathizing', but some factual stuff - actual interviews, or some behind the scenes with the tank.

Gwyn Evans · Legend

Part Two tonight was superb! Can't speak highly enough of it. Excellently scripted, incredibly thoughtful and daring in tackling an aspect of the Great War that has been, in some quarters, a banned topic. Brilliant.

Gwyn

James H · Legend

Must admit didn't see it last night. The memsahib insisted on Who Do You Think You Are? It was Brian Blessed, so I haven't quite got my hearing back yet. Anyway, I've recorded it. Pleased to see such enthusiasm on here.

As regards Pt 3, this isn't the best start: "1918, and after four years of combat the British invent a new weapon designed to break the stalemate." But maybe that was for reasons of brevity. There's a clip here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p024lyp6

Does anyone know what they used for the exterior shots of the tank?

compound eye · Colonel

*HOT OFF THE PRESS INFORMATION*

Hi Paul

Our World War will feature in our forthcoming DVD release on 20th Oct entitled WORLD WAR ONE CENTENARY BOX SET – BBCDVD3976.

So glad you enjoyed it.

Best wishes

DVD Enquiry Line

compound eye · Colonel

Chaps and Ladychaps, it is the TANK episode tonight at 9pm.

It looks every bit as original aand captivating as the previous episodes.

Going to try and suspend pedantic needs for rivet level accuracy, and just applaud the fact that someone is brave enough to make stuff like this for TV.

compound eye · Colonel

Hmmm, not quite as convinced as I was with parts I & II.

Think the director went a bit overboard with the woozy memories & visions. He may have been a Shane Meadows fan, and seen the very excellent Dead Man's Shoes a couple of times more than is healthy...

Plus the story didn't seem as strong. It seemed to drift in and out quite a lot as if filming 6 dirty blokes in a box was somehow enough & made a decent plot, well judged pacing, palpable threat & tension, twists & pay-offs superfluous.

The tank looked pretty good from outside though. Kept changing from Bovington's bulldozer based Mk.IV outside to a Mk.V inside, and they seemed to keep swapping the numbers around like it was Countdown... B46 to No.7, with & without eyes.

I think there should have been more grunt and less heartstrings.

-- Edited by compound eye on Thursday 21st of August 2014 10:21:44 PM

mike_m · Major

Yes, I agree, too much sentimentality, far too much music which distracted from the story. The first two were pretty hard hitting and although not without faults, did a good job of giving the viewer an impression of being involved. This was, well a bit crap really for all the reasons you gave above

Mike

Gwyn Evans · Legend

Definitely the weakest of the three, IMHO. And apart from the strange Mark IV outside/Mark V inside tank, "Niveleur" was a Composite/Hermaphrodite, not a Male as represented.

BTW, Charles Rowland's memoirs are held at The Tank Museum, and I think I'm right in saying that Lt Mould emigrated to South America after the war.

Gwyn

TinCanTadpole · Legend

I meant to look at this thread a couple of weeks or so back, but waited because I hadn't seen the latest episode of the time. My own views agree very much with what has already been said: the modern music was out of place, and the shaky camerawork wasn't appealing, but the first two episodes each developed to become engrossing - I enjoyed them very much.

Sadly episode three was a bit disappointing. Not bad, but certainly not as good as the first two. Having the use of Bovington's Mk IV replica was good, despite the obvious contrast with the interior, which featured a Mk V's rear turret, however it was not the only MkIV replica used in filming - did anyone else spot that there was one of those shortened rent-a-tanks taking part as well? I would have left it out, if I had been making the programme - the shape is not right.

Apart from that, the only real thing to comment on is the too-quiet interior of the tank: everyone writing about rhomboid tanks seems to agree that they were very noisy, making speech, even by shouting, near impossible. Obviously in a programme there are lines of speech to be delivered, but given the good educational qualities of episodes one and two, perhaps the noisy clamour inside the tank could have been represented, with subtitles to show what is being said?