‘Gallipoli’ TV Show Review

IMDB

Genres: WWI, Military History, Docu-drama

Rating: Highly Recommended

Here’s the TL;DR for my review:

• Pros
  • Did not glorify war
  • Heartbreaking
  • Well made and shot
  • Good acting by and large
•  Mixed
• Cons

I’m keeping this review short because my hands hurt and I don’t want to type much.

Watching this reminded me of Band of Brothers. (For the record BoB is my favorite tv show of all time, and my favorite military fiction of all time). In some ways it was better, in some ways worse, but by and large the two are comperable. This is high praise, because BoB is widely considered to be excellent.

I liked how the creators of this show showed the inhumanity of mechanized warfare and the humanity of people on both sides of the war.

The boys in the squad this show follows by and large are impressive actors. The colonels and generals who the show follows were really, really good actors, same goes for James Callis and the reporters. (Callis played Gaius Baltar in Battlestar Galactica. At first I had trouble seeing anyone besides Baltar, but after one episode I no longer saw Baltar and now saw Bartlett)

They were given an excellent script. The sets seemed real to the WW1 era. I liked that the Turks were humanized so well. The wound-prosthetics and fake dead bodies looked authentically disgusting. I was really impressed. I liked the sub-plot love triangle, which is not something I like usually

I was sad to learn that this 7-episode didn’t find an audience when it first came out. This was excellent.