Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jonah Hauer-King, Lesley Manville, Julia Brown, Zofia Wichlacz, Mark Bonnar, Parker Sawyers, Blake Harrison, Eugénie Derouand, Ewan Mitchell, Ahad Raza Mir, Miriam Schiweck, Gregg Sulkin, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Eryk Biedunkiewicz, Cel Spellman, Johanna Götting, Beat Marti, Carl Grübel, Matthias Lier, Jonathan Harden, Grace Chilton, Arthur Choisnet.
World On Fire might not be the most in depth, the most heroic, the fiercest critique of World War Two, but it has a sense of honour and grace to it that many television series have neglected, overshadowed, or even pumped up as if to show the period of waste and fear as though it is one big adventure: a celluloid advert for the want of war.
What brings the second series to life, despite the loss due to other commitments after the lengthy stoppage because of the Covid crisis of Sean Bean, is the attention to the working class, the ones who truly suffered under the constant bombing raids, the focus on the Indian soldiers out in North Africa, and the very different way that the war altered and changed the life of five distinctive and strong willed women; and not a touch on film used as propaganda to blow smoke over the lives of the echelons of society, for this is fire delivered by maniacs and the working and middle classes doing their best to snuff out each rising flame.
Indeed it is impressive to see the creators of the series place their attention on the Indian brigades, the sappers, who fought for the British with such courage and bravery, because they saw an opportunity to push them out of their country once the war had been won; indeed as one moment in a field hospital frames the belief with foreknowledge, “We fight the Nazis first, then we can fight the British.”
The lives of the characters are such that it is impossible to not feel empathy and the belief of their own convictions, indeed Zofia Wichlacz is impressive in her role as Kasia Tomaszeski, the Polish Jewish survivor of the Nazi war machines brutal extermination programme, and who is perhaps shaped by the experience with hatred as she attempts to integrate into society, only to want to keep on killing those who have destroyed her homeland.
It is to Ms. Wichlacz, the ever-impressive Lesley Manville, Ahad Raza Mir, and the introduction of Mark Bonnar in his role as the secretive house guest that capture the spirit of the time with style, sparkling amongst the memories of the bleakness and the harrowing, relentless suffering endured by millions on both sides of the conflict. For by paying attention in this second series to the plight of the warped fanatical minds of the young women in Nazi Germany who were promised the world in the Lebensborn programme, an unknown horror starts to reveal itself; one that other serials have shied away from placing on screen.
World On Fire hits home because it focuses on the right people, the structure on society held up by the working and middle classes, not those to whom were barely inconvenienced by a war of their own making. Understanding, fierce in its portrayal, endearing in its delivery.
Ian D. Hall