The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
VE DAY IN COLOUR: BRITAIN’S BIGGEST PARTY
Channel 4, 8.00pm
The title for this Channel 4 documentary is slightly misleading given that what we really get is a trot through VE Day celebrations in a variety of different countries.
It’s nicely put together and makes good use of archive footage, from tea parties in York to crowds dancing in Paris, but it could be argued that there’s little we haven’t seen before.
Each nation is presented in exactly the way you would expect, with the British all stiff upper lips and tea parties, the Americans really upping the flag-waving, national anthem-playing razzmatazz and the French looking impossibly glamorous despite years of occupation. Yet all clichés start somewhere and its arguable that in this case those images simply reflect the responses and cultures of the time. Amid the colourful images there are also some very moving moments from the concentration camp survivors of Dachau remembering their liberation by Allied soldiers, to the terrible story of a British couple who attended the celebrations only to return home to a telegram saying their son had died. It all adds up to a powerful lasting impression and an educational family watch in the run up to Friday’s 75th anniversary. Sarah Hughes
6.00 am Milkshake!
10.00 SpongeBob SquarePants (R) (S) SpongeBob SquarePants (R) (S) 10.25 The Loud House (R) (S) 10.35 Access (S)
10.40 WWE Raw Highlights (S) 11.40 Friends (R) (S)
12.10 pm Friends (R) (S)
12.40 Friends (R) (S)
1.10 Friends (R) (S)
1.40 Friends (R) (S)
2.10 Operation: Daybreak (1975) Factbased Second World War drama starring Timothy Bottoms and Martin Shaw (S)
A Bridge Too Far (1977) Fact-based
Second World War drama with Dirk Bogarde (S)
BBC YOUNG MUSICIAN
BBC Four, 7.00pm
The competition returns, beginning with the keyboard final. Organist and conductor Anna Lapwood is joined by Leon McCawley, professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music, to judge the musicians.