Peter Viney's Blog

World on Fire
Series 1: October / November 2019

CAST:

Jonah Hauer-King – Harry Chase
Julia Brown – Lois Bennett, singer
Helen Hunt- Nancy Campbell- American radio journalist
Sean Bean- Douglas Bennett, Lois’s dad, shell-shocked in WWI
Lesley Manville- Robina Chase, Harry’s widowed mother
Zofa Wichlacz – Kasia Tomaszeski, in Warsaw
Max Riemelt- Schmidt, German radio overseer
Yrsa Daley-Ward – Connie Knight, pianist and singer with Lois
Eryk Biedunkiewz – Jan Tomaszeski, Kasia’s younger brother
Ewan Mitchell- Tom Bennett, Lois’s brother
Victoria Mayer – Claudia Rossler, Nancy’s neighbour in Berlin
Johannes Zeller – Uwe Rossler, factory boss
Dora Zygouri- Hilda Rossler, Uwe and Claudia’s daughter
Mateusz Wieclawek – Grzegorz Tomaszeski
Brian J. Smith- Webster O’Connor, American doctor in Paris
Parker Sawyers – Albert Fallou, French-African musician in Paris
Arthur Darvill – Vernon, an RAF pilot
Blake Harrison – Stan, platoon sergeant

One of the USPs of this production is authenticity of language. Poles speak Polish with subtitles. Germans speak German with subtitles. The French speak French with subtitles. The English ones don’t need subtitles, not with actors of the class of Lesley Manville and Sean Bean.

The first two episodes, set mainly in Warsaw and Gdansk / Danzig, as the Germans invade are extremely powerful stuff. Later, astonishingly, a TV series manages to compete with blockbuster films Antonement and Dunkirk in reproducing the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940. That’s a huge achievement.

Harry & Kasia passing Polish troops on theirway to defend Gdansk.

There is a lot of story, I won’t even attempt a synopsis. Suffice it to say there are four stories interwoven.  VERY interwoven, which I’ll come to later. We start in Poland, about to be invaded by the Germans in 1939. This centres on Kasia’s family and Harry Chase, her boyfriend, living in Poland and working at the British Embassy. Kasia’s dad and brother, Grzegorz , have to go off to Gdansk (as it is now, or Danzig as the Germans called it) to fight the invading Germans. Harry marries Kasia in order to get her out of Poland on the final diplomatic train after Britain declares war, but at the last second she shoves younger brother Jan onto the train instead. Kasia’s home is invaded by the Nazis and she becomes a resistance fighter. The Polish sections are by far the most harrowing. If you want to know how far we failed Poland, read Robert Harris’s fine novel, set in 1938, Munich. I knew kids with Polish dads (air force) back when I was in primary school, but in the last ten years most of us have met and made friends with Poles, and that makes the Warsaw bits so real. It is about being occupied.

Kasia (Zofa Wichlacz)

There are so many books about the German occupation of the Channel Islands. The very best book about being an occupied country in World War II is by Mal Peet, and it’s called Tamar. It’s for kids on the surface, but just read it or get the marvellous unabridged audio book. It’s about occupied Holland in late 1944 and early 1945. Tamar explained something to me (and I had the privilege of discussing this with Mal Peet shortly before he died). We were in Center Parcs swimming pool in Holland  thirty years ago. A large and late middle-aged German man was doing a very vigorous crawl across the small children area. The Dutch guy in charge blew a whistle. He said politely, ‘No crawl stroke, please, It is dangerous for the small  children.’ The German said, ‘No.’I do not think so.’ The Dutch man blew the whistle again and said “Out of the pool NOW. I do not argue with fucking Germans!’ If you’ve read Tamar, you’ll say “Right on!”  However, let’s remember that 30 years have passed since that incident and no one swimming around now could be associated with WW2. They just might have been then. The Poland story here brought it all back.

Nancy (Helen Hunt)

Then another plot centres around Nancy, an American radio journalist based in Berlin (though Nancy gets to Poland at the start and France at the end, but so many of them do.) Nancy lives in an art deco apartment next to the “good Germans,”  though after seeing the graphic invasion of Warsaw it’s somewhat hard work to accept any good Germans. But they try. Even in the most violent action scenes, there will be one nicer German guy who doesn’t want to kill anybody.  The Rossler family has a young daughter, whose epilepsy renders her liable to concentration camp elimination by the Nazis. Epilepsy in a child (rather than being Jewish or Gypsy) is an interesting and unusual choice for victim, and it extends our awareness of Nazi evil to a group not usually mentioned

Robina (Lesley Manville). 

Then there’s Harry’s life in England, and his romance with Lois. Harry is a sensitive and posh boy with a wealthy and snobbish mother, Robina (Lesley Manville) who lives in a small manor house. She is, as would be expected, completely brilliant in the role.  Lois lives in a small two up two down house with her dad Douglas (Sean Bean). Douglas is a bus conductor and sells anti-war newspapers. He was shell-shocked in World War One. Sean Bean gives another landmark performance. His son, Tom, goes off to join the navy and in other harrowing scenes is on a ship torpedoed in the South Atlantic at the Battle of the River Plate (I think). As the series progresses, Douglas has to cycle more and more often to see Robina, standing at the door, twisting his cap in his hand. She expresses great and snooty disdain, but I’ll bet you that by Series Two, romance will be in the air.

Harry and Lois

The Bennetts are poor- Tom and Lois share a bedroom. Well, as I said it’s two up, two down. Lois is a singer in a dance band. Harry joins the army and becomes a lieutenant in two minutes. He leads a platoon with Stan (Blake Harrison), the sergeant, as his best mate and the only one who knows what to do. My dad would have liked that. He was a sergeant and said most officers couldn’t tie their own shoes. When I was at grammar school, he insisted I joined the Combined Cadet Force. In case of war, your CCF exams would fast track you to officer training. ‘I thought you said officers couldn’t tie their own shoes!’ I exclaimed. ‘Mmm. Well, it would be best for you then,’ my dad said quietly.

Stan (Blake Harrison) a cheerful loveable NCO

Plot spoilers? I hope not, but it does happen early. Harry has got Lois pregnant, He also leaves Jan, his young Polish brother-in-law to live with mum. While heavily pregnant, Lois travels to France with an Entertainments unit which seems highly unlikely. Coincidence? She runs into Harry. While even more pregnant, with birth imminent, she’s still doing concerts back in Britain, now for the RAF.

Thread #4 takes place in Paris. Webster is an American doctor (Brian J. Smith) and is gay and strangely attracted to French-African trumpet player, Albert. We sense the imminent German invasion of France, and what with him being black AND homosexual, don’t hold up much hope for Albert’s chances.

Harry at Dunkirk: feature film standards

An aside on locations. Mostly it was filmed in the Czech Republic, standing in for Poland. The beach scenes were apparently St Anne’s on Sea … do they mean the Dunkirk scenes? Wow. Brilliant.  England is Wigan. This is Wigan with Northern accents for all, but a Spitfire and Hurricane squadron fighting in the Battle of Britain within walking distance.  Yes, I know Spitfires were very short range aircraft and fought the Battle of Britain from Sussex and Kent. They couldn’t even get to Sussex from Wigan without refuelling.  OK, I guess the major Northern cities had air defences, but that didn’t involve “ditching inthe drink” in the English Channel. Then again Sean Bean is a Yorkshire accent not a Lancashire one. Some of Paris looks like Paris, but the closer up bits may be Prague as well.

We were totally hooked right through, and really frustrated by the extreme cliff hanger in the last episode – with the “World On Fire will be returning” announcement. No plot spoilers.

The two main points are a strong degree of “afterthought” political correctness, and the way the plots interweave so much.  It’s a story, and if coincidence didn’t come into play, you just couldn’t get the characters together. That’s what fiction does. The books I most enjoyed were ‘Consciously Fictive’ which means the author didn’t give a shit about the classic Aspects of The Novel criticisms of coincidence’s role in pre-20th century fiction. Thomas Hardy was held to be the ultimate villain in using coincidence.  I’m sure he would love the plaque on Barclays Bank in Dorchester, detailing that this is where the mayor lived in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. Lived in this house? No! He didn’t! It’s a novel. On the other hand, even Thomas Hardy (whose Wimborne blue plaque I drive past about once a week) would say of World On Fire,  ‘Hang on, guys, this is stretching it somewhat.’

Kasia in Warswaw

Some of it is perplexing to anyone with a vague knowledge of World War II and / or European geography. Perplexing? Bizarre. After much fighting with Germans, Kasia’s brother, Grzegorz, and his mentor, a tough Polish soldier, flee through the forest. They fight the Germans, then they fight the Russians … note the Hitler / Stalin pact left Poland attacked by both.  But the Russians would be coming from the east, the Germans from the west and they must end up heading west in the plot.  At one point they are fighting the Germans again, and a British armoured unit turns up on the road and they escape in the cross fire. So where was that? The woods look like the bits of Poland we’ve been seeing. (No British forces whatsoever were there in 1939). Then they walk a bit more through forest and arrive near Dunkirk.  Maybe there’s a magic portal.

Coincidence. Lois’s brother, Tom, is manning the British Navy escape rowing boat.  Harry is further along the same beach.

Harry (Jonah Hauer-King ) on the beach at Dunkirk

The British army were never in Poland in 1940. So we must  assume Grzegorz and his pal walked all the way across Poland from Gdansk, then all the way through the entire industrial heartland of Germany without being stopped, then across Holland and Belgium, and ran into this British unit who are fighting the Germans somewhere (not that the British were in Holland then, and only in a tiny area of Belgium), before joining the British evacuation at Dunkirk, involving his brother-in-law plus his brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s brother, recently returned from Argentine waters just in time to row the boat out to the British destroyer. Yeah, right. It also puzzled me how Tom could be resisting being called up in September 1939, but be 7000 miles away on a battleship in naval uniform (fully trained) by December, when the Battle of The River Plate took place.

Because of plot spoiling, I won’t even go into the last episode, but it is COINCIDENCE writ as large as you can imagine. No, larger than that. I also don’t believe the British flew right across the North Sea and did parachute drops to the Polish resistance way back in 1940. France, yes. Poland? No.

Sean Bean as Douglas Bennett

Then there’s shoehorned in PC. Our recent Remembrance Day Service 2019 stressed the role of Commonwealth troops, but obviously two black French-Senegalese soldiers are the heroes in evacuating the shivering jerking shell-shocked British soldiers, especially the “Squadron Leader.”  It has been noted that as the British Expeditionary Force had barely seen action at that point, it would be hard to be shell-shocked. Shell shock is a major theme, starting with Douglas. Tom sees it in the sailors after the torpedo.  If you prefer, it’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Douglas has it. The Squadron Leader has it. Grzegorz has it. It’s very Iraq / Afghanistan war and real. I realize my dad must have had it, but suppressed it, as it used to be. He drove into Belsen with Richard Dimbleby’s BBC radio unit. My mum said he woke nearly every night with nightmares about Belsen. He died aged 54 of cancer. It’s not a light subject. They hit it powerfully.

Then we have the Good Germans to contrast with the Baddies. It works. You feel their reality. Then you have the two gay guys in Paris, the American doctor and the French-African trumpet player (though flute player was the Shakespearean euphemism). Add the Afro-Caribbean pianist, the Senegalese French soldiers. Then towards the end, Harry is recruited by the Secret Service to be dropped into France or Poland. The officer recruiting him is ethnically Indian. No, the BAME / gay aspects don’t reflect the likely attitudes of 1939 or 1940, but are tuned to 2019 sensibilities.

Do not question the geography too far, nor in fact, do not question the geography at all. Best not to question the history either.

Never mind, the geography, feel the action. And the relationships. It’s very good. The Warsaw, Gdansk, Dunkirk and South Atlantic sequences are easily feature film quality. The romantic plot? Well, it’s the romantic plot. Emotions are heightened in war. The acting is first rate throughout … but I’d point out Robina, Douglas, Harry and Kasia as the stars for me.

The main issue is sloppy history, ludicrous geography. It’s a pity they didn’t research the facts properly.