Days That Shook the World: The Complete Second Season

The BBC's Tradition
Continuing the BBC's fine tradition of engaging as well as educating documentaries, Days That Shook The World uses original footage along with reconstructions of events to give a unique perspective on historical events. It's a particularly effective combination, as it not only highlights the relevant timeline of events, but delves into the motivations and personal history of the protagonists on both sides. The episode dealing with the WW I Christmas truce is made all the more evocative and poignant using this method.

Hightlights include:

Gagarin - First man in space.
Hindenburg Airship crash.
World War I Christmas Truce.
Cold War Spies - U2 Gary Powers down and Spy swap.

Highly recommended.Days That Shook the World: The Complete Second Season

A Great Series ( Full Listing )
Days That Shook The World was first shown by the BBC in 2003 and follows the trend of drama-documentaries by mixing reconstructions with news footage in a series of hour-long shows that take two important and somewhat related days and dramatises and documents what happened. This connection can be somewhat loose, such as the pairing of Marconi's first transatlantic radio transmission and Concorde's first flight into John F Kennedy airport in New York. Granted, the ocean that had to be crossed is the same but the mediums, technology and importance are vastly different. However, some are very much better, including a genuinely tense and shocking dramatisation of the Kristallnacht. In occasional moments, the series breaks from its own rules by devoting an entire hour to one subject, such as the bombing of Hiroshima or to the negotiations that brought the first world war to an end but, typically, it's a half-hour per topic and, sometimes, offers some very surprising moments in amongst the...



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