Entertainment

This Near-Perfect 2-Part Historical Drama Is One of TV’s Most Ambitious WWII Series

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While the most popular titles about World War II are movies, including classics like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List, a handful of TV shows have gone on to also portray the dark chapter in world history. Among them is World on Fire, a BBC series that first released in 2019 and was abruptly cut short after two seasons. The series, led by The Little Mermaid‘s Jonah Hauer-King, depicted a series of compelling and at times heart-breaking storylines from the early days of the war.

In its two-season run, the series received some major critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, World on Fire not only has a 92% average score from critics, but received an impressive 100% for Season 2. So, while the series has yet to receive worldwide recognition, there’s no doubt that it’s one of the most ambitious, and critically acclaimed, WWII TV shows out there.

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What Is ‘World on Fire’ About?

Set in the earlier days of WWII, World on Fire follows the intertwining fates of ordinary people in Britain, Poland, France, Germany, and beyond, as they grapple with the effects of war on their everyday lives. Among them is Hauer-King’s character Harry Chase, a British translator working in Warsaw when the war breaks out. In addition to his convoluted love life, the series follows his character as he’s recruited to become a soldier, and later rises through the ranks of army intelligence. Other important characters include Kasia Tomaszeski (Zofia Wichłacz), a Polish waitress who joins the Polish Resistance against Nazi occupation, and Helen Hunt‘s Nancy Campbell, an American journalist risking her own life to expose the Nazi truth and propaganda in Berlin.

In each of the intertwined stories, not only does World on Fire paint a picture of what the war meant to all kinds of people, but the series also shines a light on some of the lesser known and overlooked moments of the war, including the Battle of Danzig in Poland and the Battle of the River Plate near Uruguay. In Season 2, World on Fire kicks off in the chaos of October 1940. This time around, viewers see how the Great War makes its way to Britain with Harry and other pilots like him revving their engines to defend the skies over Manchester. The series, created by Peter Bowker, also stars Lesley Manville, Sean Bean, Eryk Biedunkiewicz, Julia Brown, Yrsa Daley-Ward, and Parker Sawyers.































































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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
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Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

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🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

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What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





02

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Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





03

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How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





04

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What makes a truly great antagonist?
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What do you want from a film’s ending?
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06

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Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





07

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What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
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What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





The Academy Has Decided
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Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

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You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

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You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

Oppenheimer

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You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

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You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

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You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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‘World on Fire’ Is a Must-Watch Historical Drama

Image via PBS/BBC

From the critics’ reviews alone, World on Fire surely joins the list of must-watch TV. Among the highlights in the reviews are the performances on the show, notably Hauer-King, Bean and Manville. “Sean Bean has made a career out of playing noble leaders like Boromir in Lord of the Rings. But he’s wonderful here as a working-class pacifist whose mind World War I shattered,” writes one review. “The best thing about the show is the great Lesley Manville’s performance as Robina,” asserts another review. On the show, The Crown actress plays Robina Chase, Harry’s mother. “A believable and craftily comic portrayal of a woman who reluctantly lets down her guard in response to the war.”

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Most of all, critics praise the series’ perspective of showing individual emotional stories from their characters, and letting their experiences depict the atrocities of the war. After all, while statistics can go long in describing the horrors that happened during that time, the personal, heartfelt stories show them expertly instead. “World on Fire is, at times, unbelievably cheesy – but the characters’ broad strokes make for high-drama entry points into the true horrors of the historical narrative,” wrote one review.

With all that said, while World on Fire came to an end after Season 2, the series remains as one of the BBC’s most ambitious and critically acclaimed series on WWII. By using heartfelt character arcs to tell multiple stories, the series succeeds in not only being an emotional drama, but also an action-packed war series about the atrocities and realities of war.


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Release Date

2019 – 2023

Network
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BBC One

Showrunner

Peter Bowker

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  • Jonah Hauer-King

    Harry Chase

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  • Zofia Wichłacz

    Kasia Tomaszeski

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