Set around a small french town near the frontlines during the first year of the Great War (1914), this is a well-made and entertaining melodrama.
As a symbolic representation of bravery, sacrifice and redemption it's at times quite moving.
It centres around four women all of which go through a tremendous amount of extraordinary experiences during a short period.
At the final credits it honours all the women who assisted the war effort, yet I would argue that the series doesn't really address the experiences of ordinary women - except perhaps as background and incidental detail.
Over the seven hour duration we cover such topics as espionage, nursing and surgery, prostitution, familial loss, treason, conscientious objection, ambulance services, abortion, lesbian love affairs, child abduction, fleeing from the law, ultimate sacrifice, false imprisonment, sexual abuse and church corruption - and so on.
Of course these things occurred and actual women would have experienced aspects of all of them - but packing it all in to a short series and connecting all those issues to four people detracts from historical realism.
Certainly, women served as nurses, for example, but how many of them were also fleeing from a murder charge, having an affair with a surgeon, hiding under an assumed name, and involved in a plot to betray the entire war effort?
That's just a few of the things that one character experiences over the period of a few weeks. At one point all four women are awarded medals by a general. Everyone is rushing from one highly dramatic encounter to the next.
The counter argument might be, 'well, ordinary experiences wouldn't be so dramatic'. I disagree. I believe it would have been possible to make a series that captured more plausible situations and experiences of the average woman and still be entertaining and moving (possibly more so).
Contrast this with the recent 'All Quiet On The Western Front' which brilliantly dramatised the experiences of one soldier - his story is unique in some ways, but most of what you see on screen could have applied to any average participant in the frontlines.
As a symbolic representation of bravery, sacrifice and redemption it's at times quite moving.
It centres around four women all of which go through a tremendous amount of extraordinary experiences during a short period.
At the final credits it honours all the women who assisted the war effort, yet I would argue that the series doesn't really address the experiences of ordinary women - except perhaps as background and incidental detail.
Over the seven hour duration we cover such topics as espionage, nursing and surgery, prostitution, familial loss, treason, conscientious objection, ambulance services, abortion, lesbian love affairs, child abduction, fleeing from the law, ultimate sacrifice, false imprisonment, sexual abuse and church corruption - and so on.
Of course these things occurred and actual women would have experienced aspects of all of them - but packing it all in to a short series and connecting all those issues to four people detracts from historical realism.
Certainly, women served as nurses, for example, but how many of them were also fleeing from a murder charge, having an affair with a surgeon, hiding under an assumed name, and involved in a plot to betray the entire war effort?
That's just a few of the things that one character experiences over the period of a few weeks. At one point all four women are awarded medals by a general. Everyone is rushing from one highly dramatic encounter to the next.
The counter argument might be, 'well, ordinary experiences wouldn't be so dramatic'. I disagree. I believe it would have been possible to make a series that captured more plausible situations and experiences of the average woman and still be entertaining and moving (possibly more so).
Contrast this with the recent 'All Quiet On The Western Front' which brilliantly dramatised the experiences of one soldier - his story is unique in some ways, but most of what you see on screen could have applied to any average participant in the frontlines.