Tony Robinson's World War 1

Peter McGinn

This is a first rate documentary series about World War I, aka The Great War. At the time it was the third documentary series I had watched about World War I in a few week period. I placed it in between the other two as far as quality and entertainment value. Tony Robinson does a pretty good job as presenter, speaking with enthusiasm and a latent curiosity to find out what caused the war and how it was fought. Many times Robinson comments on the splendid 3D pictures taken during the war, long available but never before viewed on television. Perhaps I missed something, but they seemed like regular black and white pictures to me. Perhaps if they had been compared with other pictures there would have been more clarity or depth on display, I don't know. One good thing this program does has to do with the experts documentaries like this always use to discuss the subject. Usually you see authors or university professors, but here they used experts in the field, many who held jobs to do with their expertise. I found them to be more knowledgeable than usual. One change that may have helped the presentation has to do with the reading of soldiers' journals and diaries. Robinson did all of the reading, and it might have been more effective if they had other actors read these entries to break up Tony Robinson's voice-over. In any case, it is a historical series well worth watching.