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Redknight055
Reviews
The Ten Thousand Day War (1980)
Still one of the best documentary series on the Vietnam War
"Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War" is a 26-part series and still one of the best documentary series on the Vietnam War. This Canadian production is well-written and well-produced and gives a succinct though comprehensive narrative in chronological order of the events in Vietnam from 1945 onwards. The series eschews political and social bias or commentary and only relates the facts of the events of the war as they occurred. The series deals only briefly with the First Indochina War of the Vietminh against the French as the main focus is by far America in Vietnam. The series concentrates on the American phase of the war from 1962 through the U.S. military advisory stage to the Tonkin Gulf Incident of 1964 and then the U.S. commitment of the fighting arms of the U.S. armed forces in 1965 when U.S. troops were sent to South Vietnam to engage in battle against the Vietcong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army to the U.S. withdrawals of its fighting arms from 1969 to 1973 and the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. Veteran American actor Richard Basehart gives the narration and the fact that the series was made in 1980, only 5 years after the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese, makes the events with which it deals seem fresh as they had occurred only in the recent past at the time the series was produced. If one wants a comprehensive history of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, this series is certainly one of the better documentary series to watch.
Korea: The Unknown War (1988)
A comprehensive and thorough television history of the Korean War
"Korea: The Unknown War" was made by Thames Television and was broadcast in the UK in mid-1988, which I suspect was done to coincide with the Seoul Olympics held slightly later that same year. The original UK version was screened in Australia at roughly the same time. What makes this series worthwhile viewing is that it deals with the Korean War from all sides and from most angles. Participants in varying roles and from various countries were interviewed for the series, including from the Communist side. This makes the series particularly interesting as it is not some homogenised, one-sided war documentary series, which too many are, and also allows everyone from all sides to give their own (sometimes propagandist) account of their actions in the war or their view of the war, or some aspect of it.
It proceeds from the Japanese surrender in 1945 to the conclusion of the armistice in July 1953 and in doing so gives a full background of the circumstances of the division of Korea and the origins of the war. It is largely objective and without bias, though one can detect the odd slightly anti-American dig in such exaggerations as 2 million Koreans "probably" died as a result of the U.S. Air Force's bombing of North Korea, which is hardly likely when compared to the Western Allies' ferocious bombing of Germany in the Second World War which killed some 635,000 Germans. Be that as it may, "Korea: The Unknown War" is one of the best documentary series I have seen on any war or military subject and would recommend it to anyone who wants a thorough and comprehensive screen history of this pivotal and bloody mid-twentieth-century conflict.