The Great War

Image: People researcher Julia Cave interviews Victor Packer, a Great War veteran for the series. Clip: Opening titles of the first episode 'On the Idle Hill of Summer' TX 30 May 1964. p01z12lt

It took just nine months for the BBC to conceive and produce one of the most significant documentary series in the Corporation's history - The Great War. Running for twenty-six, forty minute editions, the series was sold to twenty-six countries across the world, with the BBC Handbook for 1965 claiming that 'the series will ultimately be seen by every television country in the world'.

The programmes used archive footage of actual First World War battles and life in the trenches, held at The Imperial War Museum in London. Interviews with service men and women, by 1964 in their sixties and seventies, were highly revealing and candid.

Made in association with the CBC (Canada) and the ABC (Australia), rather than another European partner, the series drew an audience averaging 8 million viewers per programme. Director General to be Alisdair Milne came up with the idea for the series whilst he was working as a producer on the current affairs programme Tonight. Big name narrators such as Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, and Marius Goring helped make the series such a success.

The Great War was highly acclaimed at the time, and set the standard for subsequent documentaries on the subject, most notably Thames Television's The World at War of 1973 which approached World War 2 on a similar scale.