Absolutely. This and many other excellent - and truthfully "dramatic" documentaries have made it very hard for fictional drama based on the same events to compel us to deeper, or even the same, level of involvement.
It could only do so by focussing keenly on individual lives and characters, within that epic context. For me this is the main weakness of World on Fire, precisely because there are so many of them and there is little real development, so far at least... but at the same time, the direction has failed to achieve a genuinely epic sweep; so the conceptual ambition falls between two stools. If series two narrows its focus a bit, that may help.
As Adam Sweeting put it "more depth and less breadth might have been advisable".
It could only do so by focussing keenly on individual lives and characters, within that epic context. For me this is the main weakness of World on Fire, precisely because there are so many of them and there is little real development, so far at least... but at the same time, the direction has failed to achieve a genuinely epic sweep; so the conceptual ambition falls between two stools. If series two narrows its focus a bit, that may help.
As Adam Sweeting put it "more depth and less breadth might have been advisable".
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