Pain From Occupied Europe:World On Fire S1.

Air raid sirens, gas masks, singalongs of Bye Bye Blackbird, Blackshirt rallies, the League of Nations, telegrams bearing bad news, George Orwell, Danzig or Gdansk?, lessons not learned from the Spanish Civil War, police arresting protestors instead of fascists. There's no doubt about it, the Nazis were a rum bunch. The more I know about them the less I like them.

There's also no doubt, when you take in that list above, what era World On Fire (BBC1/iPlayer, written and created by Peter Bowker and directed - variously - by Chanya Button, Thomas Napper, Adam Smith, and Andy Wilson) and shown, originally, in September, October, and November of 2019) is set in. Yes. The run up to, and early years of, World War II.

It's 1939 and the Nazi threat looms large over Europe. Harry Chase (Jonah Hauer-King) is working as a translator in Poland and he has vowed to keep his Polish lover, Kasia (Zofia Wichlacz), safe by helping her flee Warsaw. But, for Harry, there are complications in his personal life. He has another lover, Lois (Julia Brown), back home in Manchester and she doesn't know about Kasia.

Lois is a jazz singer of a lower class than Harry. Her dad Douglas (Sean Bean) works as a bus conductor and, after suffering serious shell-shock following his involvement in the Battle of the Somme, he's now a peace campaigner. Something that becomes incredibly difficult in the run up to a war against a force as evil as Nazism.

Lois' brother Tom (Ewan Mitchell) is a bit of a tearaway, something of a petty criminal, or - in his own words - "a bloody nuisance" but despite their differences their family is a loving one. Which is not something you could easily say about Harry's home life. His mother, Robina (Lesley Manville), has money and status but she is emotionally unavailable and judgemental as well as being a horrendous snob with a soft spot for Oswald Mosley (played here by Jonathan McGuinness).

Back in Poland, American journalist and broadcaster Nancy Campbell (Helen Hunt), is reporting on the Nazi invasion (this is handy for exposition in a sometimes complex story). She's no big fan of the Nazis and she's not afraid to say so. She's befriended a German family in the Rosslers and they have a more complicated relationship, still, with National Socialism.

Father Uwe (Johannes Zeller) runs a successful textile company while mother Claudia (Victoria Mayer) and daughter Hilda (Dora Zygouri) stay home. Out of sight. That's because Hilda is epileptic and is in grave danger of being euthanised (murdered) as is Nazi policy for 'defective' children. In the hope of averting this, Uwe has signed up to become a member of the Nazi party but, of course, that is no guarantee of saving his daughter.

In Paris (World Of Fire really does take us on a European tour), American surgeon Webster O'Connor (Brian J.Smith) has fallen for the French-African jazz saxophonist Albert Fallou (Parker Sawyers) but Albert finds himself, being both black and gay, a target of the far right. He's beaten up by Action Francaise (an extreme right wing mob who are still in existence today) and that won't be the last of his problems.

When, after the invasion of Poland, Britain declares war on Germany and embassies are closed, Harry returns to Manchester and Lois but not with Kasia (who has stayed in Poland and joined a resistance cell, soon killing several Nazis). Instead, Harry brings back Kasia's much younger brother Jan (Eryk Biedunkiewicz) who soon bonds with Douglas, Lois, and even, to a degree, Robina. 

When the 'phoney war' ends and the real war begins all these characters, and more, find their lives turned upside down. Those lucky enough not to be killed. People sign up as soldiers and sailors, they join the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) and they join ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association).

German pocket battleships like the Graf Spee fight British cruisers in the South Atlantic, Belgium, Holland, and France are all invaded and taken over by the Nazis, and Dunkirk is evacuated. People are shot, stabbed, and hit over the head with bricks (and even irons). There are mass executions, whole groups of shell-shocked soldiers, abandoned children, and overflowing field hospitals.

It's Hell on Earth. The German people voted for hate and sure enough they've unleashed it on an entire continent, nearly an entire planet. But normal (or normal-ish) life goes on at the same time. People fall in love, women get pregnant, people fall out, and people make friends. More than anything else, people's belief systems are challenged to breaking point. Assumptions about the world are tested and sometimes people change so drastically they're barely the same person at all.

World Of Fire, once you get used to who everyone is - it's a BIG cast, does a wonderful job of showing this. It's not shy of making grand political statements (and nor should it be, it shouldn't be controversial to say Nazi murderers are bad) but it never forgets to underpin these statements with scenes showing how people's real lives are affected by the war.

There are multiple examples. There's Konrad (Boris Szyc), a Polish citizen who finds himself on the run from, and fighting with, Nazis along with another of Kasia's brothers, Grzegorz (Mateusz Wieclawek). There's Henriette (Eugenie Derouand) - a nurse at Webster's Paris hospital who confides in him that she is hiding her Jewish identity - and then there's Sergeant Stan Raddings (Blake Harrison) who finds himself serving under Harry. A man he comes to, eventually, respect while still begrudging the fact that Harry has become his senior due to his class. Literally officer class.

Some of the other roles could have been fleshed out a bit better. Charlie Creed-Miles is a great actor so it would have been nice to see more of him as David Walker, Harry's boss at the embassy in Warsaw, and Yrsa Daley-Ward as Lois' musical partner and friend Connie is painfully underused and never really gets to have her own storyline. She almost, but not quite, serves as an example of the magical negro trope (see also Moses Ingram in The Queen's Gambit).

But these are very minor caveats in what eventually becomes a tense and touching drama. A drama that can be both powerful (the scenes at Dunkirk are beautifully shot but painful to imagine the reality) and sad (Harry crying the first time he kills a man and, more than anything, the horrific situation the Rosslers find themselves in).

The final episode ends on a cliffhanger with the words 'World On Fire will return' appearing on the screen. That was in November 2019 and it would surely have returned much sooner if it hadn't been for a little thing called Covid. It finally has returned and is available to watch on the iPlayer now. I'll be starting it very soon and, as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of World War II will know things will surely only get worse. As some in the West seem to have forgotten the lessons from this era, it's always worth a reminder. World On Fire does that brilliantly.