Churchill at War Season 1 Review – Decent but predictably by-the-numbers

Episode Guide

The Gathering Storm
His Finest Hour
The Day of Destiny
Out of the Storm

Churchill At War is the latest World War II documentary, bringing to life the enigmatic British figurehead that stood in defiance against Hitler’s tyranny. He was a controversial man; charming, bad-tempered and rude. However, he was also the right man to lead Britain forward in World War II and, subsequently, to victory.

Netflix have been releasing a lot of World War II documentaries lately and Churchill at War is the latest which looks (unsurprisingly) at Winston Churchill’s demeanour, personality and choices through wartime and why he’s such a reverent figure in history.

The documentary is done completely in colour, with footage restored and coloured from actual archival footage from wartime. This is also accompanied by an AI reconstruction of Churchill’s voice, but thankfully those segments are railroaded by strictly adhering to the words he wrote in – up until now – unreleased documents and letters written during his life.

All of this is great, and the show tackles a good chunk of pre-war drama, starting with Britain’s entry into the battlefield and Hitler’s rise to power, before eventually moving through Churchill manoeuvring himself to be aligned with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign against Japan. The trouble is, the last episode then absolutely rockets through the entirety of World War II’s campaign on Europe at breakneck speed. And by breakneck, I mean about 19 minutes in total.

The real focus in this episode is not on the troops,the individual wars, or how Churchill kept the positivity going in the battlefield, but instead on Churchill trying to come to terms with the new world order looming post-war.

While interesting, where Churchill at War slips up is with its presentation. The AI voice works surprisingly well but is likely to be a point of contention for some, while the re-enactment segments are pretty woeful. There’s also a constant necessity to repeat these segments throughout the four episodes too.

Churchill standing on a rooftop looking over a Blitz-ravaged London, along with him standing on the beaches, littered with corpses, are two that the filmmakers are clearly fond of, as they feature in almost every episode. Given the litany of archival footage being restored for WWII, did we really need to repeatedly throw these in?

There are also a colourful group of talking heads secured for this documentary too. Expect plenty of figureheads here, including George Bush, Boris Johnson, foreign secretary David Lammy and even a senior scriptwriter for President Obama. There are a couple of historians too, which definitely helps, but it also seems apparent that this documentary is designed for a casual audience, rather than those who want more bang for their buck – and a bit of nuance.

For example, the drama surrounding Pearl Harbour is shown with in a re-enactment of Churchill surprised by the news showing up on the radio and then immediately deciding Britain should declare war on Japan. Now, there are rumours that Churchill knew about an attack on US soil and intentionally kept quiet about it to get America into the war.

Whether true or not, there’s no discussion nor desire from the filmmakers to even entertain such notions. Instead, we just crack on and race through the next talking point. This is true for a lot of the different areas of the war, and to be honest, it would have been nice to see a bit more of these moral shades of grey through the show.

However, all that being said, Churchill at War is a decent four-part docu-series. It’s certainly not going to touch the annals of greatness like something akin to The World at War, but it’s a decent companion piece to that, looking at one of the most famous British figures in history and just why he’s so revered to this day.

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