The World Wars

It’s a smart, imaginatively made and unusually sweeping look at what happened to the world from Sarajevo in 1914 to Hiroshima in 1945, or as Churchill put it, “one story of a 30 years’ war.”

The lush narrative style is alluring, but when Adolf Hitler starts to feel like a pulpy Batman villain, you'll suspect this isn't the most insightful ­account available. [30 May/6 Jun 2014, p.111]

The World Wars has a few annoying habits, including pared-down descriptions that can be depressingly inane.

There is much to like and learn from the miniseries. Alas, executive producer Stephen David and his creative team seem intent on getting in their own way, cluttering up the inevitably fascinating narrative (offered here by Jeremy Renner) with all manner of clunky historical reenactments, hyperbolic characterizations and a soundtrack that should be shot for treason.

Nobody will accuse it of being ponderous or academic. It's expensive-looking and shallow but long.

A three-part, six-hour undertaking that proves fitfully interesting despite its offputting narrative approach.

This impulse for larger-than-life storytelling does mean that The World Wars is terminally superficial.