New BBC WW2 drama, World on Fire

World on Fire
The A Word and Marvellous writer Peter Bowker will script the seven-part series which will tell the human story from both sides of the conflict, to mark 80 years since the start of World War Two

Filming will commence next year in locations in the UK and across Europe for a likely broadcast in 2019, the 80th anniversary of the start of the war.

BBC1 to make epic Second World War drama called World on Fire

 

Release date September 2019

BBC - Sean Bean joins the stellar cast of new landmark World War II drama - Media Centre

 

But will Bean's character survive the series?

 

It can't have anything Dunkirk related in it....No one has contacted me

 

Anyone watched it yet?

 

Just started the first episode - too early to say what I think yet. Sean Bean still alive so far though

 

First impressions; awful, clichéd, bullshit. Bean, playing a pacifist, looked a bit embarrassed. Usual 'identity' issues already rearing their heads. Not sure it was wise to concentrate on the Polish defences in a city that was more than 95% German.

 

So many stereotypes from Bean's Northern working class pacifist to the bitchy, toffee nosed Mosley supporting mother of one of the characters.

As Abe Lincoln is reported to have said "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." People who have a cliched view of WW2 are likely to have their viewpoint reinforced

 

I had intended to record it. Won't bother with the rest. Cliched, anachronistic.

 

I think its good so far (They haven't got to Dunkirk yet though) then again I thought the Christopher Nolan Dunkirk film was excellent so what do I know

 

No, if anything, it has got worse. The identity-politics box-ticking, that which no 'historical' drama can do without nowadays, is proceeding apace. In addition to the queer/black sub-plot introduced last week, we seem to be developing a disability related plot too, in addition to the normal class and gender 'issues' that are meat and drink to this sort of product. I would complain about their complete failure to address the transgender community's contribution to victory in WWII, but it is only October 1939 and I fear there are many episodes yet to come.
All of this nonsense tends to distract from some of the more mundane, but equally idiotic, plot features. For example our hero, a British diplomat, with a Polish refugee in tow, steps aboard a train in Warsaw and immediately arrives at his Mum's house in leafy England, despite the fact that Poland is at war with Germany and that Germany is at war with England and France. On arrival his first act is to telephone Warsaw to see if of his girlfriend/wife is OK.
Pretty soon all the luvvies will be in uniform and we can really start nit-picking. Thank you BBC; this slow-motion car crash is providing much more entertainment than you can possibly have imagined.

 

The most entertaining thing in it is watching Helen Hunt trying to move her face. She hasn't aged well. It does remind me of The Winds of War from the '80s - anyone remember that?

 

Yes of course he could

 

Given that the Exeter was off South America by the start of the war they must have flown him out specially. Fed him on extra weetabix too, since he seemed to have no trouble lifting those shells on his own (8" guns? 200+lbs? Olympic weightlifter?)
I'm not even gonna mention the tedious twat working out his dreary 'who-shall-I-shag' dilemma while WW2 chugs along in the background.
If this is accurate it is no wonder we lost!

 

Worse than that; remember that they initially walked eastward into the Russian zone, until the naughty Russians shot at them. Amazing feet indeed.
I nearly wet myself when the brave Tommies in their carrier turned up in what I took to be a Polish forest, however the scriptwriter had perpetrated a completely different idiocy.

 

Similarly, the diplomat / translator (presumably with no military experience) leaves Poland on the outbreak of war in September 1939 and just nine months later has become a first lieutenant leading an infantry squad back towards Dunkirk. As for his obsequious sergeant, the smartly-pressed battledresses, the soldiers' brand-new SMLE rifles and the cliche-yelling Tommies, let's draw a veil over it.