Review for The World at War: Ultimate Restored Edition

The World at War is possibly one of the greatest history documentaries ever created and anyone who studied history will have watched. First shown in 1973, having taken four years and costing almost £900,000 (just over £11 Million today) this was the first documentary that really went into the whole of the war from every aspect rather than just concentrating on how Britain was affected. Over twenty six episodes the series takes us through the entirety of the Second World War from the beginning and the outbreak of the war to the dropping of the atomic bomb and the end of the war. Throughout it focuses on a number of topics from the rise of Hitler, invasion of France, Pearl Harbour and it leading to America joining the war, the role of the Soviet Union, the war in the East and of course a number of campaigns. All of these are a mixture of found, archive footage and interviews with key people who were there at the time. It was this mixture and the lack of a presenter that made the show so distinctive. Though there was no presenter, the narration of the work is done by Laurence Olivier and really only David Attenborough could beat him in his ability to describe what is going on.

I remember watching this when I was young on VHS during History classes and was utterly gobsmacked that this had not been transferred to DVD sooner as it was such a seminal piece of television history. When the BFI compiled their list of the Hundred Greatest Television Shows, it ranked it at Number Nineteen above Attenborough's Life on Earth and even such classics as Hancock's Half Hour and Cracker. With this being the series first Blu-ray it does make me wonder whether for the past twenty years have people studying history not had access to this? Or have history teachers brought out an ancient, used VHS for them to view? I do hope it's the latter as I honestly could not imagine studying history without watching a few episodes of this. Even now, it is surprising just how relevant and accurate the telling of this story is. I think this is why the show works so well, is that it is not written as an essay just providing fact after fact after fact, it inside winds the facts around the stories told by those who experienced this and that makes it all the more interesting.

The nine disk Blu-ray set is only missing one thing and that is a commentary as it would have been great to hear from a current historian or from one of the programmes' creators about the process. Other than that, I am unsure what they could have added to make this any better. One of the more fascinating featurettes concerned the restoration of the series and anyone who has watched how much work was put into restoring The Godfather on that Blu-ray will be even more surprised at just how much work was put into making this series look as good as ever… actually even better. The rest of the featurettes are wonderful and add just a few extra elements that help bolster the series and it didn't even need it in the first place.

The World at War is a series EVERYONE should watch. Everyone who wants to know what happened during the time between 1939 and 1945 and how this has affected the world as we know it really needs to have a look at this show. Other than any of the David Attenborough Nature documentaries, I cannot imagine a better documentary than this one.