Very special programme

Jul 23 2008 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

I’VE been watching a lot of The World at War recently, mostly because it happens to be on UKTV History when I’m making my dinner.

For those of you who’ve never seen the programme it’s a documentary series about the Second World War and was made more than 35 years ago.

The 26 hour-long episodes took four years to produce at a cost of £4m, which I’m led to believe was rather a lot of money in the early Seventies.

But it was worth every penny.

The series is quite simply wonderful, almost good enough to distract a chap from his onion chopping.

The World at War relies on archive footage of the conflict interspersed with interviews with those who were there, including a few people like top Nazi Albert Speer, who shouldn’t have been walking around a free man only 25 years after their massive crimes were committed.

The voiceover by Laurence Olivier is authoritative yet sparse.

And that’s part of the beauty of that old documentary. There are no gimmicks or flashy graphics; the story itself is dramatic enough.

It’s interesting to think whether today’s TV producers could put out anything to match it.

It’s difficult to see ITV, which made The World at War, investing in a programme like it these days.

I suppose the BBC might take on something that ambitious, but the corporation wouldn’t dare do something as boring as just telling the story.

They would probably feel the need to have some pretty boy presenter prancing round the battlefields to give the programme some sense of "immediacy".