World War II in Colour (Season 1)

World War II in Colour (2009) is a British documentary series you can watch online on iFILM. Thirteen episodes move through the conflict from the fall of Poland in 1939 to the Pacific surrender — narrated by Robert Powell. The series covers the Western Front, the Eastern Front, and the Pacific War in separate dedicated chapters.

The defining feature is the restoration work: original black-and-white archive footage, including material that was classified until recently, has been colourised and combined with radar-mapped terrain graphics. Footage shot somewhere in North Africa or outside Stalingrad suddenly looks less like a museum exhibit and more like something that happened to actual people in actual light.

This isn't a revisionist history or a political argument — it's a visual archive, reprocessed to close the perceptual gap between now and then. For viewers who already know the history, the colour shifts the experience from reading to something closer to witnessing. Stream all episodes of World War II in Colour online on iFILM.