User Reviews

Produced to commemorate the Century of Battle of Jutland, this program shows more or less same things we have watched several times in TV. The great new value is that human aspect of the battle improves to include not only casualties but also relatives and it breaks national boundaries displaying shocking long term effects on German civil population. It's the new strategic point of view that outclasses tactic accounts going beyond the battlefield, beyond the Northern Sea, beyond 1916 to the whole World and to the future; so today young generations learn how to appreciate his Heritage, seeing a parallel between then and now; military and civilian people read fragments of first hand Jutland History; with same intention Royal Navy locates some sites of undersea graveyards. New goals include an explanation about use of WWI optical telemeters, takes of gorgeous models of battlecruisers at Maritime Museum, actual battlecruiser plans, first time no CGI wrong ship's silhouettes, some views of Admiralty rooms, and again: the Human Dimension. Propellant ignition tests are very demonstratives but I don't like the "surprise" that Dr. Engineer exhibits seeing combustion of confined cordite; a scientist must know how powder, cordite and similar substances burning on function of circumstances (that's precisely the reason why they are used as propellants). The wood model sinking simulator remains below the level of credibility of any episode of "Mythbusters". Curiously according to new Grand Strategy approach, First Sea Lord changes previous opinion about Admiral Jellicoe. So the Blame Game aims today to some procedures at various levels of command.

No spoilers because there is nothing new or surprising here! This is an astonishingly bad representation of the battle, one that claims to provide all-new facts and various 'never befores,' including a new interpretation of this great combat. That's true only for folks who have read absolutely no histories of WWI at sea. We are informed--as if it were news--that the battle was a strategic victory for Britain (it kept the German fleet bottled up and it never dared come out in strength again) but a tactical loss for Britain, which lost far more ships, including several capital ships,than the Germans. No news there. The program goes to great lengths to "prove" that British ships were not inferior to German ships, but in fact they were--three British battlecruisers quickly blew up and sank (like HMS Hood in the next war, and for the same reason: Britain's battlecruisers were very fast but they sacrificed too much armor to get that speed, and when hit they paid the price. No focus on poor British gunnery and poor British guns, which were of inferior design.The program does show that Britain's Adm.Sir David Beatty was suckered by Germany's Hipper, who lured him into hell-for-leather cowboy tactics reminiscent of USA's Ad, Callaghan at Guadalcanal in WWII, and with equally disastrous results, but the scriptwriter ought to have come right out and said that Beatty was a fool. (And he later tried to pin his failure on his superior, Adm Jellicoe.) In all, a waste of time.