This is a strangely dispassionate account of the life and times of the greatest politician of the 20th century.
It may be a relatively true account. It certainly dispels a lot of the hero-worshipping myths that have grown around this giant figure of modern times. Churchill, the documentary illustrates, was capable of gigantic blunders throughout his career - blunders don't come much bigger than the Gallipoli campaign he launched during the First World War, as the scores of thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand lives lost in that campaign prove.
But the time maketh the man. And while being elaborately concerned to point out every flaw in his character, this documentary does have the grace to point out that at the crucial time in 20th century history, while Hitler and his Nazi henchmen were poised to conquer all of Europe, Churchill was the only man able to take on the task of stopping them.
It was Churchill who rallied a nation. Churchill who sowed the seeds to lure America into the European conflict. And Churchill who became the embodiment of strength, resistance and pugnacious freedom. This eccentric infernal engine, fueled by ferocity and alcohol, who slept only three or so hours a day and whose prodigious energy overcame all obstacles, found in the onset of the Second World War his entire reason for being. Without him we would have been lost, and the Nazis would have crushed Britain and its allies.
The documentary tells the story quite well, although Episodes two and three suffer apallingly from too much time - about 17 minutes - being spent at the start of each instalment in recapping the previous episode.
But it's somehow flat. It's as if it has to recognise Churchill's extraordinary qualities, but in a grudging, mealy-mouthed way. Yet it does tell the story, albeit in a very padded way which seems to be a bit of a newspaper-clippings job. There's too much use of 'people thought' or 'they said' and other generalised non-attributable opinions for this to be really good history.
It fortunately does feature quite a few extracts from Churchill's speeches, delivered in his inimitable slow and deliberate bulldog way. There's some very bad lip-synch here, but the voice is the thing that matters.
Strangely, though, we don't hear anything from his most famous speech of all, delivered on June 4, 1940. So here it is, for your edification:
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of the Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
There's an apocryphal tale I like to believe, that in a pause while recording this speech, Churchill muttered "and we'll beat the bastards about the head with bottles, because that's about all we've got."