The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Un VIllage Francais is exceptional story telling that evolves the characters over the duration of the War and lets you get to really know them. The 'shades of grey' moral involvement of these characters shift from good to bad and back as they encounter each other and manoeuvre to get what they want, or do what needs to be done. Most are just trying to live their lives as best they can, but some need the war to feel alive, while others shift inexplicably in character - the most puzzling one being the mayor's wife who goes from dutiful, faithful wife to traitor without apparent reason.The history behind this series is flawless - and not just the historical events, but also the costumes, sets, and details. If I had to find fault it would be that events are not always true to the season in which they are filmed. August 1944 episodes were mostly filmed in early spring, judging by the bare leafed trees. The 1943 story-line is the weakest of the series, with too much of the story focused on new characters involved with the Resistance - to the point that most other story lines and characters are put on hold. The 1943 season finale is also the weakest, bordering on laughably melodramatic. However, other seasons and story lines make up for this momentary dip in quality.

The series depicts the lives of ordinary French citizens under German occupation during WWII and the immediate aftermath. Besides doing a good job of replicating the styles and technology of the times, it hues to historical events reasonably well. Interestingly, the village depicted doesn't actually exist, perhaps the writers didn't want to cast a pall on a real city. Most importantly, the characters wrestle with the complications many of the occupied must have dealt with. How much should one cooperate with occupying authorities and how much should they resist? Much of it isn't black and white.

This is a truly remarkable, riveting, and even addictive TV series, certainly one of the best I have ever seen, regardless of language. (I'm 64. I've seen a lot of TV series.) What makes it remarkable? The acting is uniformly first-rate, the direction very good, the script even better than first-rate. Each episode holds you from the get-go, and many end with cliff-hangers that make you want to start the next episode. As I said, it is downright addicting.Are there any flaws? I don't know that I would call them flaws, but I can see that those interested in the history of the Occupation in France could have several issues with the series.1) A previous reviewer wrote that it is an "Excellent TV show explaining the life of ordinary people in Nazi occupied France." Not really true. The main French characters are almost all members of the haute bourgeoisie: a leading doctor, a factory manager, the chief of police, etc. They do not deal with the issues that friends of mine remember from the Occupation: the shortage of everything, starting with food and fuel to heat homes. For ordinary French people, the Occupation was four years of waiting in line every day for bare necessities, punctuated by an occasional dramatic event. That wouldn't make for good TV drama, though, so this series has made the dramatic more "common" than it evidently was in the life of the average French person. The episodes almost all focus on dramatic events. It makes for riveting viewing, certainly, but it gives a skewed view of daily life during the Occupation.2) Much of the focus is on sex and marital infidelity, rather than issues specific to the Occupation. (It reminds me a lot of Zola's Germninal in that sense.) This holds audiences, certainly, but there is nothing particularly related to the Occupation here. Almost all the wives turn out to be unfaithful to their husbands. I'm not sure how a feminist would react to that, or indeed many French women, faithful to their husbands or boyfriends, who lived through the era.3) The depiction of the Communist Party leaders is uniformly negative. Again, the focus seems to be very bourgeois, very much Gaulliste. I noticed, for example, that when others, even Gaullistes like Bériot, refer to the Communists as Bolsheviks, that just gets translated as Communist. There is, of course, a big difference there. It is very true that many non-Communists feared the Communist Resistance and feared that their goal was to lead France into another class war/revolution, but that was not in fact the goal of all the FTP/Communist resistants.All that said, I repeat that this is a riveting series. You will not regret watching it - except that you may well become addicted to it.-----------------I have now watched through the end of Season 6, which is as far as the American distribution has gone as of January 2017. (Season 7 is announced for mid-February.) All I have to add to what I wrote above is that this series does a remarkable job of making all the lead characters, no matter what their political position, very human and very three-dimensional. No one is all bad, and virtually no one is all good. That becomes very problematic for me in the case of the Militiamen and some of the Germans, the SS and the Gestapo. I don't like feeling sympathy or compassion for individuals who have committed monstrous crimes, as some of these characters do. Nevertheless, I will concede that even someone who can shoot two little children in cold blood - that is a VERY difficult scene to watch - might also have human qualities. I don't like conceding that, but I will.The end of episode 12 of Season 6 turned my blood cold. It focused on some of the worst events of the Liberation, and made it anything but a joyous event. I know, having interviewed people who lived in a small town in France at that time, that what is described did indeed take place across France. Some of it is even toned down, like the shearing of the women accused of collaboration with the Germans. Still, it is a particularly somber note on which to end the penultimate season.

This TV show describes the life of ordinary people in a small town of rural France during the German occupation in WWII. It is extremely well documented, cleverly written and very well played. The great plus of this series is that it meticulously analyzes the mechanisms which brought some people to collaborate with the Germans and others to resist, without judging, without falling into easy generalizations. The treatment of the small communist cell's actions is particularly spot on. I highly recommend this show to anyone interested in WWII, and anyone who wants to understand life during a war, and how good people can come to serve a fascist regime.