37 Days

This new 3-parter, screened on consecutive nights on BBC2, tells the story of the complicated countdown to the First World War from the point of view of the senior figures in the opposing governments.  It's about as clumsy as drama gets while still being riveting in its telling of the strange coincidences and politics that led to bloodshed.  For a start, the cast of the British cabinet is such that you identify the actors more than their historical counterparts, while the German Kaiser's staff all speak English viz ze German accents, Ja!  There are also helpful young narrators on either side, junior clerks, small cogs in big wheels, who introduce us to characters and their foibles from a future perspective.  "In those days, we weren't thinking of war..." and so on.  At one point an absurdly effeminate Austrian slinks onto the set and walks towards camera looking like an escapee from an Adam Ant video c. 1982.  Far be it from us to say they weren't terribly dandy types, but he's not the only Boche-lover to mince across the screen.  While the British are presented as crusty old backbiters, the other side indulge in sissy massages and have their hair oiled to dripping point while declaiming foppishly.  Overall it has the feel of a made-for-schools drama.  Lots of stiff dialogue that in the hands of lesser actors would creak loudly enough to drown them out.

In fairness, it does clarify the points between the assassination of someone most British people had never heard of in the 'boring' and faraway Balkans and the outbreak of European war, and the effort of tuning into the rather wordy hour is rewarded entertainingly enough.  Ian McDiarmid, in particular, is superb as no-nonsense Foreign Secretary Edward Grey.  We're not going to be surprised in the remaining episodes, but we'll still watch, in the hope that it will evolve into the sort of classic historical drama that, without boasting, we do quite well here.

Maybe in another hundred years they'll be portraying the Russians and Ukranians in the same light, but let's hope not.