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I've also got a set of rather grainy/blurred set of the series on DVD.
I tend to think that it was one of the only attempts ever made to portray with some attempt at accuracy the life of a squadron on the western front. It certainly avoided the inane mock heroics of Fly-paper and for that reason alone it’s worth watching.
I rate it as good to excellent and with the Good Major (writing here on this very thread) restoring the BE2 replica from the show, it has added modern interest in my ‘onest.
I don’t think you could portray any aspect of the British army or British life in The Great War period without a mention of the class structure, as it was so pronounced in those days.
Snobbishness is a two way street by the way—the working classes (that’s where I’m from) certainly often had no desire to mix with the upper classes. This is a point American film makers often fail to grasp—I’m thinking here of the stupid scene in Titanic (another complete load of tosh) where the good old Irish boys and girls are dancing down in the bowels of the ship and the Kate Twinset character (supposedly very upper class) goes down and joins them. I guess if you’re not British you won’t understand, but my guess would have been that the party would have been a non starter with her there.
As to the upper classes, they were dying in substantial numbers on the ground too, look at junior officer casualties if you doubt me and even officers of senior rank died in considerable numbers—often rather giving lie to the idea that they were all thirty miles back getting drunk in a chateaux.
S S-C.
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