World on fire?

[Namechange3007]

Anyone watching? Helen Hunt appears to have an entirely new face.

Smacks a bit of Home Fires which ended with a 'to be continued dramatic event' and then it was axed. Very strange way to end.

The "will return" was all a bit Marvel wasn't it?

I liked Helen Hunt, it's unfortunate she's messed with her face (I'm assuming) as she is a good actress. When she admitted to being raped I got quite teary.

It is frustrating that we have to wait now to find out what's going to happen to them all!!

I think Sean Bean and Lesley Manville have been brilliant throughout.

I don't understand why they couldn't have finished the story lines and then signposted what was coming next / interesting new challenges. Agree that making it 10 episodes would have been better.

So - Vernon and Lois - planning the marriage but concerns over his family? She marries him and he's not everything he said he'd be / problems with the family?

American doctor in Paris - partner sent away to the camps, threat of exposure of his sexuality / marries nurse to protect her / she blackmails him into doing it / she marries him to protect him / they become active in the Paris resistance

Nancy - she'd be a fool to go back to Germany at this point as the chances of her being raped /sexually coerced by creepy guy seem super high. Her trying to escape to UK / or going back to Germany, some indication of what her new role might be and some hint of how she'd keep him at arms length

Kasia - back in UK and struggling to adapt / "just" be a wife not a resistance fighter

Harry - doing more dangerous missions

What would you like to have seen? What do you think could happen to these characters?

@TigerJoy - you're not Peter Bowker are you?

However, I always enjoy a bit of light hearted speculation so here goes...

Lois's brother, Tom, last seen entering Spain - sort of neutral with fascists in charge . Seeing as he wasn't very keen on fighting, he may choose not to return to England at all but spend his time loafing around some neutral place - think Lisbon or Casablanca - ducking and diving while trading on the black market like a 1940's Mancunian Del boy.

Lois and Vernon - if he survives the Battle of Britain - marrying but she soon realises that worthy and kind as he is, there's no spark and she'll be looking around for excitement and probably itching to get back on the stage. Perhaps Randy will live up to his name ?There will be trouble.

Douglas and Robina - their friendship will continue to blossom and, despite her misgivings, Robina will become attached to Lois's little girl, thinking that she might be the only grandchild she will ever have. (By the way, has anyone ever explained why Harry can speak so many languages? Being able to speak Polish without having a Polish-speaking parent, seems unlikely in an upper middle-class chap)

Nancy - she'll continue to rub the authorities up the wrong way until they kick her out. She'll have to leave by the end of 1941 anyway. Perhaps, she'll be sent to England by the end of 1940 to broadcast from Blitz-torn London about the plucky Londoners plight, like a female Ed Morrow.

Harry and Kasia - hmm, all depends doesn't it! If she doesn't survive then he'll be back in England, depressed and broken, but still in love with Lois and realising it's too late. He'll probably volunteer for more hazardous missions to try to forget both her and Kasia. If Kasia survives, perhaps they'll end up trekking south through Europe and eventually end up in Cairo, just in time for the desert war to start - memories of 'The Fortunes of War' come to mind.

Paris doctor and his lover - difficult to say. Maybe he will marry the Jewish nurse to save her and think of returning to the USA before Pearl Harbour, or maybe they'll leave it too late and end up in Vichy France or join the resistance.

I think the writer would like a series for every year of the war, but someone else had that ambition for 'The Crimson Field' and it didn't get beyond one series. I just hope whatever they do, it has a natural and distinct end.

🤣🤣🤣 busted!

The actor who plays Harry has just been cast as Prince Eric in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. This had better not get in the way of filming S2!

BBC also cancelled The Village which was meant to be multi series to take us up to the present. I also wish that instead of just seven episdoes they had filmed more at the time and then shown a longer series. It was only just hotting up and has now eneded and will probably not be back on screen for another year or so.

I know part of the BBC issue is finance to make longer and moredrama series . They also don't seem to option the stars who go onto other stuff (as mentioned above). The Last Kingdom was thankfully picked up by Netflix when the BBC were going to drop it.

At the end when Kasia was looking up at Harry I thought she was going to surrender as she had just had enough or try to escape away from him.

Kasia is the best character in this, I see her covering fire for Harry , and being captured, possibly ended up in a camp. I hope not , I hope she gets away more than Harry does.

Will do, thanks!

I thought they were setting her up to surrender / protect Harry.

Bloody ridiculous though - why did they split up to go up the hill, why is Harry exposing himself along the skyline signposting where he is to the nazis - did they teach him nothing at that training camp?! Also if Kasia was caught logically she should be shot (all her colleagues were) - although I agree it would make a meatier story line for her to end up in a camp, it doesn't make sense. Like a lot of the plot points in this series!

It's annoying because I have found myself invested in the characters and wish I felt things had been brought to a conclusion for at least some of them!

When it suddenly ended I thought wtf !
Did they suddenly run out of money so couldn’t continue?
Bizarre.

I agree that it was a strange ending, unless they already knew it was being recommissioned at the time of writing. If they didn't know it was going to be recommissioned, perhaps they edited it nearer to broadcast to leave a cliffhanger, hence the strange ending.

I also agree that Harry was standing in just the right place at the end to be a target, still SOE was in its infancy in 1940, so perhaps that excuses its amateurish training and almost laughable instructions to a new agent. As for what Harry was actually supposed to be doing there, it's anyone's guess.

One other thing I must mention from the last episode that really made me cringe as much as laugh, was the moment Lois, accompanied by her friend, wheeled her pram through an aircraft hanger full of Spitfires under maintenance on an operation RAF station, and all at the height of the Battle of Britain! Sorry, but that was just nonsense.

Oh well, despite all of this, it still managed to keep my interest, so there must be something about it. If I had to pick the aspects I liked the most, I'd say it's Douglas and Robina's friendship and also Kasia's story in Poland.

Absolutely- Robina’s emotional development and her friendship with Douglas, plus Kasia in Poland were the highlights. Also the German family. Harry’s emotions did seem to go from A to B, with a perplexed look on his face.

I didn't think Kasia was considering surrendering. I think she was trying to make a choice between going with Harry and allowing him to rescue her and take her back to England, or staying on and being a resistance fighter which is the person she now feels she is. By doing the latter she would take off in a different direction from Harry and try and find the resistance somewhere. I would think she knew that if she allowed herself to be captured she would be killed.

I'd like to know why her group was singled out for rescue though? Why was Harry sent to save them?

It made no sense to me Gerald. Harry was deliveing "light explosives* presumably in his backpack but they could have been dropped and picked up by the local resistance and as for guiding fighters out. Locals would do that as they know the terrain better (lIke Tom was guided by a local girl out of France). It was jsut a device I suppose so Harry could meet up with Kasia again.

There is no way Kasia would have got away for so long with picking soldiers up in the cafe regularly that then turn up dead the next day.

I laughed at Lois with her pram in the hangar as well and no one batting an eyelid at having an illegitimate baby. So Parisian doctor (or Randy) is Frau Campbell's son. I just don't feel the connection with Paris Doctor and his lover, not sure if it is the script or bad acting. I thought the Rosslers all acted really well, that story was heart breaking.

It all reminded me of Ken Follet's Century Trilogy books (well the middle book dealing with WW2), similar character focused story lines and unbelievable coincidences.

I have not long finished the Ken Follet trilogy and have been comparing World on Fire with it. I've been interested in World on Fire, but was gripped by KF's books - much more historical detail, giving me more belief in the coincidences. I guess that would have proved a far more difficult adaptation though.

@thatgingergirl which is the Ken Follet trilogy please?

Sewingbea - it's the century trilogy - Fall of Giants/Winter of the World/Edge of Eternity. They follow five families from the early 1900s to 1980s. I couldn't get through the first two quickly enough, although the third wasn't quite so engrossing.

Thank you!

I hope this doesn’t go the way of Home Fires, House of Elliot or The Village. It’s so annoying when that happens.

For me, Robina and Douglas were very interesting, along with Kasia, and the Berlin father with the sinister neighbour and colleague. I thought that the children, jan and hilda, were very well cast and acted. Unfortunately, I found Lois’ story unlikely and I didn’t feel any chemistry between her and Harry. I also thought that that these two were the weakest actors.

@ConfCall you're absolutely right.

There is no way Kasia would have got away for so long with picking soldiers up in the cafe regularly that then turn up dead the next day.

I think Kasia is based on a Dutch woman who (aged 14 when the war started) did exactly this: I read her obituary in the Times recently - she died aged 100.

What Lois would have done was put a brass curtain ring on her wedding finger and tell people she was widowed (it's what my mum had to do in the 1950s, divorced with a baby).

It was good. My only beef was the clothing - all the uniforms, many of the clothes looked pristine, I'm sure in Wartime outer clothes probably got cleaned ...never! Only Sean Bean's clothes looked worn!

It was a good reminder of the horror of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Good story.