"Great War Diaries" is an amazing series. Using a combination of diaries, letters, high quality stock footage (in most WWI documentaries it's in terrible condition), amazing modern computer graphics and live re-creations, they tell the story of WWI on the individual level. Instead of focusing on battles and strategies, the show focuses on the people--folks at home as well as soldiers and how they viewed the war as well as how it affected them. Also, unlike many documentaries, it focuses on peoples from many nations and on various sides-- humanizing them and their struggles.
This second episode is about war once the 'grand adventure' and 'fun' of WWI disappeared. I say this because going into it, so many people thought that the war would be entertaining and with minimal losses...and be over by Christmas!! Instead, it lasted over four years and claimed many millions of lives. The realism of this is the main focus of this show. Starvation, disease, old men replacing the dead young men, rats, injuries, carnage, rotting corpses and the like are all discussed and shown (with very realistic looking skeletons). It's all very nasty but tastefully done despite it all. Well done and awful...just what you'd hoped it would be.
