World At War, The Review

Whether you’re novice or historian, this box set — now polished for Blu-ray and converted from 4:3 to 16:9 — remains the ultimate World War II documentary. Narrated by Laurence Olivier and produced by Jeremy Isaacs, it combines astonishing archive footage with eyewitness accounts, guiding you in hypnotic detail through the planet-rocking war’s various campaigns. At 26 episodes, it’ll take military planning just to clear enough time in your diary to get through it, but you’ll come out the other side an expert on everything from Auschwitz to Zhukov. Essential viewing.