Last night on television Gerard O’donovan
More insight was needed in this Great War film
In many ways “How Australia and Canada Won the First World War” might have been a more accurate title for 100 Days to Victory (BBC Two). In exploring the final months of the Great War, this documentary gave more or less all the credit for victory, in this first episode at least, to two “freethinking” generals – Australia’s John Monash and Canada’s Arthur Currie – who came up with the idea of “all arms warfare” that finally broke the trench-warfare stalemate, leading to the rapid conclusion of the war in just over three months.
The episode opened on the last-gasp German spring offensive of 1918, and the role played by Australian, Canadian and Scottish troops in repulsing it. After which, most of the emphasis was on the planning and build-up to the pivotal Battle of Amiens in August 1918. A battle which, with the Allies’ newly integrated approach to using tanks, air support, creeping barrages and infantry – and a variety of technological innovations such as sound ranging to help pinpoint artillery fire – proved a turning point and resulted in territorial advances.
I would love to report that this was a fascinating, ground-breaking or absorbing documentary but it was wasn’t. Over the past four years of centenary commemorations there have been so many fine, good and not-so-good documentaries about the First World War that a certain amount of battle fatigue – if not compassion fatigue – has, inevitably, set in. It now takes something unique or insightful to make an impact. Peter Jackson’s recent They Shall Not Grow Old, for example, where full colour, cuttingedge restoration and audio techniques brought astonishing immediacy and emotion to the experiences of troops in the trenches.
The workaday approach utilised by 100 Days to Victory to tell its story – archive mixed with talking heads, uninspired re-enactments and voice-over diary-extracts – offered little that we haven’t seen already. And even the show’s unfamiliar argument – effectively that it was the Aussies and Canadians wot won it – while intriguing, wasn’t very graciously handled, giving altogether too little credit elsewhere. Let’s hope next week’s closer proves more generous.
100 Days to Victory ★★