I really enjoyed this show. It show much about what WW2 spies had to go through before going in to occupied europe. I would recommend to any spy or history buffs.

I wasn't quite sure I wanted to watch this, but once I got started, I'm happy I did. The historical links are solid and well-presented. Whether SOE was really as effective as the series hints at or not is a matter of conjecture, but there is absolutely no denying that the SOE training and missions had a significant effect not just on WWII, but on the development of the CIA para-military units, post-war SAS and the US Army Special Forces. It was very interesting to see a very varied group from today put through the SOE syllabus and training program, to include peer assessment and self-selection (drops) that are still an integral part of SOF selection today. I was only surprised by one of the non-selections and none of the selections.

Historian Max Hastings as very critical in his judgement of the effectiveness of the SOE in a couple of his books. There is a lot of romantic garbage surrounding various accounts of both SOE and the various resistance movements they fostered. Going beyond that, the men and women recruited for the Strategic Operations Executive were brave souls and deserved to be honored. This series attempts to show the selection and training process they went through before being sent to likely torture and death in the field. No joke hen one of the instructors says that the life expectancy of wireless operators was six weeks. I rapidly became enamored (if that is the proper term) with several of the candidates (Copsey and Jeffries in particular). Yes it is reality television and much of the ground covered in the documentary segments (operation Anthropoid and the attack on the heavy water plant in Telemark) are well known and well covered stories to the point of nausea. HOWEVER, it is fascinating to see the SOE syllabus brought back to life in some form and to get the impressions of the participants going through the training process.In one exercise it is easy to shrug off these 21st century people as they scale rock surfaces with their cushy safety lines preventing them from falling, while their historical counterparts would have been in real danger of falling to their deaths.Some of them really do suffer from fear of heights and no matter how well they are harnessed they are ascending 80 feet of vertical rock surface and surmounting their phobias. The series illustrates the desperate measures in wartime that out grand parents or great grandparents resorted to to deliver us from the fascist regimes that much of the world succumbed to.

For a start will someone please tell these people how to dress? The so called ex Colonel has jammed his side cap over his head like a tea cosy. His pips are way off on his epaulettes. The uniforms only seem to fit where they touch. As for weapons training you have to be joking, when you fire a weapon, short or long, you lean forward into it, not backwards like all these seem to be doing. The section on first introductions to firearms was a joke. Golden rule one, never point it anyone unless you want to kill them, second golden rule every time you handle a new fire arm check to see if it was loaded. The instructor failed to ensure his class did this. They then put their pistols in their pockets, great way to shoot yourself. I don't know why they had the ludicrous stuffing explosives into dead rats exercise, far better to show them how to blow things up. All in all a pretty poor show.