World on Fire/BBC1

This new drama did achieve its principal aim of making me watch the second episode and possibly the series but I had reservations.

It begins in Manchester in 1939 at a fascist rally in which anti fascists Harry Chase (Jonah Hauer-King ) and his working class girlfriend (Julie Brown) are attacked by thugs. Chase is a translator in the British Embassy in Warsaw ans becomes involved with a Polish waitress Kasia Tomaszewski (Zofia Wachacz) whose father and elder brother enlist in the Polish army.

An american journalist Nancy Campbell (Helen Hunt) sees the Nazi tanks on the border and fears the worst.

As each scene unfurls I was reminded of one from a film. When for example Nancy sees the Panzer tanks in the forest I thought of Battle of the Bulge, the departure at the railway station when Chase waits for Kasia whom he has now married reminded me of Casablanca and other scenes such as the soldier waving the white flag only to be shot by the Germans, Lois’ father Douglas (Sean Bean) reading the Manchester Chronicle headline on the Fall of Poland waere hardly original.

This said the atmosphere in the 3 cities where the action took place – Gdańsk, Manchester, and Paris was well created.

Of the characters the best drawn was Harry’s mother Robina (Lesley Manville) a grotesque snobbish woman who thought Oswald Mosley looked attractive in his black polo neck. Mosley, a notorious womaniser, had that effect on upper middle class women.

Nancy, possibly modelled on Martha Gellhorn, was a smart ass know-all but Helen Hunt is superb actress. Chase himself may not have enough about him to hold the series together.

The after-taste was I want to know where it’s all going … and that the BBC can compete with Netflix.