The big problem this series has is that it straight jacketed itself to using colour footage and unlike other similar series "in colour" it only uses original colour footage. Ultimately this means the series is often restricted in its ability to tell the story it is trying to tell because of the lack of suitable footage and many key events are simply skimmed through or essentually skipped as "there is no original colour footage".
I gave it a generous 4 stars because it does actually provide a different perspective to your average WW2 documentary, not by its use of colour footage but because of the restrictions it self imposed on itself to use colour footage. Most of the footage is from 'behind the scenes' rather than the battles and it provides a good idea of what it was like to live through the mostly mundane history of those events, as the saying goes war is 95% boring and mundane and 5% sheer terror. If the series embraced the material it had and sold itself as 'the human story of the pacific war' or 'the untold stories of the pacific war' it could have been a great series exploring the day to day lives of servicemen and civilians living through this calamity of history.
Instead it comes across as a poor war documentary which skims over important events and either simplifies or misrepresents many events or gets many facts plainly wrong.
I gave it a generous 4 stars because it does actually provide a different perspective to your average WW2 documentary, not by its use of colour footage but because of the restrictions it self imposed on itself to use colour footage. Most of the footage is from 'behind the scenes' rather than the battles and it provides a good idea of what it was like to live through the mostly mundane history of those events, as the saying goes war is 95% boring and mundane and 5% sheer terror. If the series embraced the material it had and sold itself as 'the human story of the pacific war' or 'the untold stories of the pacific war' it could have been a great series exploring the day to day lives of servicemen and civilians living through this calamity of history.
Instead it comes across as a poor war documentary which skims over important events and either simplifies or misrepresents many events or gets many facts plainly wrong.