I found this film to be educational. I learned a lot of facts that I never knew existed. The scenes with Churchill and his advisers were hypnotic. The acting was touching and down to earth. I am now looking forward to the new rendering of 'Dunkirk'(2017) armed with the knowledge from this remarkable film.

I couldn't watch this program all the way through. It's an important subject, the performances are decent, the reenactments convincing, the interior monologues touching, and the budget was adequate.But it's ruined by the directorial style. The camera seems to be held by a drunk. It wobbles all over the place. There are zip pans from one face to another, and multiple closeups of faces. One pivotal figure, Tennant of the RN, muses over the task he's faced with. And what does the screen show us? A safety razor placidly plowing through a cream-coated face, leaving some ugly black stubble in its wake.I think this fad -- the cinema of hypermania -- may have begun with MTV because, after all, you can't expect an audience of fourteen year olds to sit quietly and watch a static shot of Elton John playing the piano. You must keep their attention prisoner by cutting rapidly from his face to his fingers to his feet to his shades and when you run out of that, you introduce a display of fireworks.Maybe it's my fault because I'm too tired or too old. I was very disappointed.

Curious programme as it seems to almost deliberately and consciously write the Merchant Navy out of the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk. Even when what is clearly a Merchant ship is being attacked by Stukas, in contemporary black and white film, the narrator refers to Royal Navy destroyers! When Merchant ships are referred to they are almost invariably called personnel ships or supply ships, almost never Merchant ships. The only actual reference to a Merchant ship is where one is on fire and a group of Royal Navy people go onboard to fight the fire. Even then there don't seem to be any Merchant Navy people present. Is this a deliberate omission, or one based on ignorance?

The show is a docudrama using original film footage from the 1940's, the true stories of soldiers from the British Army, and adding written drama to tell the story of Dunkirk. Actors took the part of the ordinary soldiers, army officers and government officials, including Winston Churchill, and the whole had intense and dramatic narration by Timothy Dalton. I thought the idea of taking real stories and making a show with the old film and narration was a good one. I have no objection to black and white footage, indeed I found it added to the interest and drama. However, I found the show unwatchable owing to the director's idea of adding immediacy by fancy camera angles and jiggling the camera about. Good dialog and direction added to the superb acting here make this unnecessary. It was ghastly to watch and made me seasick even before the boats arrived. What a waste of good ideas and a great story.