THEY SHALL NOT GROW POSTMODERN: Netflix now streaming ‘deeply moving’ and ‘immersive’ WWII documentary with rare footage.
Netflix is now streaming a documentary with newly restored archival footage that promises to be one of the most immersive films ever made about World War II.
Colourised film and rare interviews tell the story of ordinary peoples’ lives during Germany’s bombing of Britain between 1940 and 1941.
With VE Day approaching this Thursday (8th May), now is the perfect time to brush up on some vital history, and Netflix’s new film Britain and the Blitz won’t disappoint.
Actually, it does disappoint — its narrative is rather weak; there’s not much new you’ll learn about England during the Blitz beyond themes explored in dozens and dozens of documentaries and dramas about this period:
While the documentary does showcase some fascinating slices of life — like the class divide between north and south when Eric moves to Coventry and clashes with the local kids — it also feels like a missed opportunity not to give more historical context or explore these stories through a wider lens.
For example, the evacuation effort initially included plans to send children to Canada, America, and New Zealand, until one of the ships was destroyed, killing 260 people in the process. That kind of background could have added a deeper emotional layer to Eric’s storyline, but it’s completely overlooked.
There’s also a slightly odd inclusion around the Communist Party, who are briefly shown as the plucky underdogs trying to undermine the government. Yet the film never acknowledges that they only supported the war after Russia was invaded, which feels like an important omission if you’re trying to be historically accurate.
Visually, the documentary is well-edited for the most part, with archival footage and photographs effectively used — but it’s constantly undermined by the musical score. I’m not sure whose idea it was to add a pulsating, overly dramatic soundtrack like we’re in a Hollywood action flick, but it really doesn’t work.
Moments that should land quietly are drowned out by soaring orchestral swells or over-the-top sequences that make you feel like Tom Cruise is going to rush on screen. At one point, when we’re told St. Paul’s Cathedral avoided being bombed, a choral score kicks in on cue, clearly designed to heighten the moment emotionally — but it just feels forced. Once you notice moments like this, it’s hard to unsee. Sometimes less really is more.
That’s perhaps the best summary I can give of Britain and the Blitz overall. There are some interesting anecdotes, and the first-hand accounts do help ground the documentary emotionally. But the narrow focus, stylistic overreach, and lack of broader historical insight all hold this back from being truly memorable.
It’s not an outright bad documentary — but compared to so many others on this subject, it sadly slips into forgettable mediocrity.
Like earlier Netflix documentary series World War II From the Front Lines (narrated by former Star Wars actor John Boyega, a man who truly loves his fanbase), 2025’s Britain and the Blitz’s newsreel footage is massively reprocessed. It’s been reformatted to the 16X9 aspect ratio, cleaned up, colorized, sharpened, and over-processed. As I wrote last year about the earlier documentary:
The classic 1970s Thames Television WWII miniseries “The World at War” used the footage of the Imperial War Museum and numerous other stock footage libraries to tell the history of WWII as had never been explored on television before. However, because film restoration technology was somewhere between non-existent and in its absolutely infancy, the black and white newsreel footage “The World at War” used was most assuredly the real thing, and not digitally processed and colorized to a fare-the-well. Because of the role of the battlefield cameraman, the footage was rarely as “in your face” as something shot by Hollywood for a dramatic war movie, but it was believable because it was real.
In contrast, “World War II: From the Front Lines”takes wartime footage that was much more competently shot than footage from the previous war, and massively overcooks the processing, often to absurdly surrealistic ends, with shots that seem almost psychedelic in the end result. Even more so than Peter Jackson’s reworking of WWI footage, it might make this material more palatable to 21st century audiences, but at the cost of diluting the original footage that’s somewhere at the base of the producers’ digital processing.
This trailer gives only a hint of how much processing has been slathered over some of the shots seen during the Netflix miniseries, but it does highlight another issue with the footage. As with Peter Jackson’s WWI documentary, “World War II: From the Front Lines”recomposites the original 4X3 footage into the widescreen 16X9 aspect ratio used by most 21st century HDTV sets, to make the footage that much more appealing to Netflix viewers, with little care that 1940s-era audiences would not have viewed footage in this screen format[.]
The same can be said of Britain and the Blitz:
Still though, could be worse — far worse. AI is now allowing for still photos to be animated, a technology that will end very, very badly: