Too much of everything

ridiculous rating

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It is interesting to read the negative reviews all seemed to be from males. As a female, I loved the whole series. I found the use of English, instead of bad tries at German by the actors, all the more believable. I could relate to the thoughts of the people, sons, brothers, lovers, husbands, mothers, with the same sounds as my own. It was refreshing to see war presented in not the blood and guts way that American Television portrays wars. Death was sudden and silent, an innovating look at this senseless war. The actors not being well known, made their characters all the more realistic. As time distances us from the real event, and the hatred of 'the enemy' is lost in new generations, the participants of both sides of a conflict should be seen as families, losing a much love member. Maybe in the future the population of countries will be able to raise their voices loudly against politicians who sit safely at home, while good men and women are sacrificed. I have visited Gallipoli and El Alamein and shed a tear, like I did while watching "The Passing Bells"

I thought this was a good drama and am a little bit baffled as to why some people needed to see blood and guts to be entertained or convinced.Anyone who has studied or read about the history of WW1 would already understand about the horrors of trench life and going over the top into battle.The viewer doesn't need to be hit over the head with blood and gory details we can leave that to the imagination and besides too much graphic details would only detract away from the dialogue of this drama as this story relies mainly on its script of what the soldiers are saying{their thoughts aloud}and thinking.And i think it was awesome. Of course there is a lot we are not shown such as the grounds in the trenches were always muddy and fall of rats and body parts from dead soldiers used to prop or hang things from etc the list is endless of how things really were but then WW1 was always censored our government kept quiet for decades until the 1980s about the amount of soldiers whose bodies were still being found by farmers in France and Belgium,sometimes as many as a hundred a year.And also so many people were totally unaware of how many of our soldiers were cruelly shot at dawn or if they had even knew in the first place. I thought this was a nice tribute to the men who served and put the point across that it was the war that was evil and not the men who served.I think this drama is good for educating the younger generation who might not know much about WW1 as it portrays how misled the men back then were and how underage boys got sucked in on having to do their bit.Very tragic and its what this drama does well. The film Oh What A Lovely War was a British musical about WW1 this also didn't show blood and guts as everything was said in the dialogue in what the actors were saying.Passing Bells has used the same idea.

Overall I found this a bit disappointing and not helped by the time it was shown as it couldn't be more graphic.It tells the story of 2 men from either side fighting in WW1. The acting was very good I thought and the attention to detail was fine. However, I found it difficult to get really involved as it seemed to jump a bit between both sides.The ending was particularly disappointing and I thought contrived with both of the main characters meeting in no mans land while trying to repair damaged barbed wire. The fact that they then end up fighting and killing each other minutes before the war ends was a bit gimmicky and predictable.So overall not the greatest although it did convey how awful it must have been to fight in the war as well as the despair of seeing so many friends die. Spoiled by the contrived and quite predictable ending I thought.

The first person on here to review this, (Mr Mcinsley), got it absolutely right, but I would go further; it's so dumbed down and insipid as to be pointless. This series is supposed to follow the lives of a German and a British soldier during WW1, which I expected to be a moving, gritty and realistic story; how wrong could I be? The main characters are drab and stereotyped, along with the other supporting cast. The battlefield sets look artificial, the uniforms are inexplicably spotless, even the trenches are carefully sculpted. Nothing looks remotely convincing. No one is smoking. Just about every soldier smoked backed then but I don't recall that anyone lights up. No one gets cut, bruised, maimed or blown to pieces. That's what happened - that's what should be made clear to the viewer. The screenplay is laughable. Because it is pre-watershed it's devoid of any believable dialogue or any credible action scenes. It's like some corny censored war film from the 1960's, where anyone who dies gets an instant painless demise, no one swears and all the main characters are such fine and jolly nice young men. Pass the sick bag.A few random samples of what is so wrong with this series. The main British Tommy character, (called Tom just for extra cheese value), at one point is part of a stretcher party, taking two wounded stretcher cases to a field hospital, (where our hero's girlfriend just happens to be stationed, how handy is that?). Everyone is so Clean. The wounded in the stretchers have whiter than white shirts and bandages without a spot of blood or dirt. All of the stretcher party have immaculate uniforms. They look like something from a parade ground. At one point a new recruit starts to itch having only just arrived and is cheerfully informed by our hero that it's merely lice; he hasn't been there five minutes yet his freshly pressed clothing is crawling with vermin. The German hero (Michael) is sent to the Somme to face the British attack. He and his comrades wear Pickelhaube helmets. These were virtually unused by this time in the war. You will not likely find a photo of Germans wearing these at the Somme. They also should have had the regiment numbers in green. They were only red at the very start of the war. They would have definitely had reissued ones with removable spikes which they would have detached by order. These are just a few basic facts that the BBC got wrong. It might seem anal but this is supposed to be a big budget series and it lacks even fundamental research. Tommy also inevitably ends up at the first day of the Somme - now there's a surprise - where he manages to witness the close hand death of each one of his comrades in turn as they cross no man's land. It seems no WW1 drama is complete unless the protagonists go through the Somme carnage. In this case though the carnage is presented as a game of toy soldiers. Tom Tommy survives it all by staggering into a shell hole, where for reasons unknown, he falls asleep. A matter of metres away, his German counterpart hero has also decided to have a snooze after the collapse of the British advance. Once he wakes up he reckons it will be a good idea to climb up onto the parapet of his trench to see what's happened to all those British soldiers he was busy machine gunning earlier. Meanwhile Tom Tommy also decides it would be a great wheeze to climb out if his hiding place and stand up in the middle of no man's land for a look around. At that point I switched off. No one would do that; it really is that simple. It was one ludicrous event too many. Simple is also how I would describe the script writers of this dreadful yarn.I can't imagine what possessed the BBC to make this nonsense. Either make a realistic drama portraying the real suffering and horror the soldiers faced, along with the trauma and tragedy endured by their families and loved ones, or don't bother. It is as well there are no survivors of that conflict left alive to see this as I would imagine they would feel deeply insulted by it. I certainly feel that it's an affront to an adult's intelligence. Truly a lamentable and vapid piece of non drama which snubs the memory of the participants of the First World War. The BBC should be ashamed for such blatant misrepresentation of what our recent ancestors went through.