The War

Excellent.

A "micro" account of the war, I prefer "macro". Zeroes in on a handful of Americans and their memoirs of wartime. I prefer history from causes, strategies, leaders, how countries worked together etc.

It's a Ken Burns doc on WWII, I could've rated this the same in advance. It's exactly what you'd expect, with an old southern belle stealing the show just as Shelby Foote did in The Civil War.

I cannot understand why this gets so great a set of reviews. Ken Burns talents and the celebrity narrators are well known - but the product here is nothing compared to what Olivier does alone in The World at War. And the humans stories have been done better elsewhere. I can only put the high scores for this down to the series pre-marketing. It is a good documentary series yes - but not stand out from many others.

Instead of just focusing on the battles, this series also thoroughly examines how the war affected civilian life.

I thought this was a very effective documentary. We have all seen a dozen or so of these retrospectives, but Burns brings some new stories and new footage. Sad, funny and almost always interesting, if you have any sense of history there should be something here for you.