Phoenix DVD Blog

Some war films are just action films with uniforms. The best ones are something else entirely. They stay with you because they are not really about explosions, weapons, or battle scenes. Those things matter, of course, but the war films and series that hit hardest are usually about people. Ordinary men placed in extraordinary circumstances. Friends who become brothers. Soldiers who are terrified, exhausted, angry, loyal, brave, broken, and still somehow willing to move forward because the man beside them is moving forward too. War Films and Series Are Really About People That is what keeps drawing me back to the best war films and war series. It is the bond. When a war film gets that right, the audience feels it too. You start to care about the group, not just the lead character. You remember faces. You remember small moments. You remember losses that, in another type of film, might have passed by quickly. For me, the best examples are still Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Black Haw...

By the late 1980s, television was starting to change. Budgets were growing, visual effects were improving, and some TV shows were beginning to feel more ambitious than the simple standalone entertainment many of us had grown up with. For me, Star Trek sits right in the middle of that change. I had seen the original Star Trek when I was in primary school, mostly through repeats. I didn’t watch it religiously. I was young, there were bikes, fields, friends, footballs, and plenty of other things pulling me outside. But it was there in the background, colourful, strange, and instantly recognisable. Even if I wasn’t fully following the stories, I knew the look and feel of it. It was only later, when Star Trek: The Next Generation started appearing on TV, that the franchise really clicked for me. Suddenly, sci-fi on television felt calmer, more thoughtful, and more grown up. I was old enough by then to realise there was more going on than spaceships, uniforms, and alien worlds. Together...

There was a different feeling to television in the 70s and 80s. You didn’t binge watch entire seasons in a weekend. You didn’t pause episodes halfway through to check your phone. And unless you owned a VHS recorder, if you missed an episode, that was usually it. Television felt more temporary back then, but somehow more memorable at the same time. Some of these shows were huge parts of my childhood. Others drift in and out of memory like fragments from weekday afternoons, summer holidays, or Saturday mornings in front of the TV with cereal before the rest of the house was awake. Looking back now, what strikes me most is how different those shows were compared to modern television. Most older series were built around self-contained episodes. Problems appeared and were solved within 45 minutes. Characters rarely changed dramatically. Major story arcs were uncommon. You could miss three episodes and still jump right back in without confusion. That’s very different from modern televis...

Television mattered more in the early 1980s than it’s easy to remember now. With limited choice and fixed schedules, TV wasn’t something you curated, it was something you shared . Families watched together, kids absorbed what was on, and shows repeated often enough to become familiar whether you followed them closely or not. What we didn’t realise at the time was that we were watching television slowly evolve, not just in production quality, but in ambition. Looking back now, the journey from brightly coloured, standalone episodes to fully serialised, long-form storytelling mirrors how our own tastes changed as we grew up. As television became more ambitious, more cinematic, and more willing to tell longer stories, it also made me look back differently at the programmes that first shaped my viewing habits. I’ve written more about those earlier shows and the wider viewing habits of the time in   The TV Shows I Grew Up With - Before Streaming Changed Everything , where I gather th...

I didn’t religiously follow every TV show that aired in the 1980s. Far from it. Most days were spent outside, messing about, only drifting indoors when it got dark, or when the weather turned properly miserable. Children use to do that back in the day. Television filled the gaps rather than dictating activities. But when it rained, and plans were cancelled, whatever was on the screen usually stayed on. That’s where a whole second tier of 80s TV lived for me. Shows I didn’t seek out, didn’t follow closely, but watched often enough that they became familiar and fondly remembered. I’ve already written about the 80s shows that had the biggest influence on me elsewhere. What follows are the ones I saw in passing , enjoyable, upbeat, and endlessly repeatable, even if they didn’t leave quite the same mark. The Shows That Were Always On Looking back through old photo albums, there is often one of these shows playing on the television behind me and other family members. They really were p...

If you’re new to World War II television, it can be hard to know where to start. Three series dominate the conversation — Band of Brothers , The Pacific , and Masters of the Air . They’re often mentioned together, share the same creative roots, and each tells a different part of the same global story. But they’re not the same experience. I have these two sets on Blu-ray, and I’m still waiting for Masters of the Air to get a proper physical release. If you jump in at the wrong point, there’s a good chance you won’t fully appreciate what makes them so powerful. So the real question isn’t just which one is best — it’s: Which one should you watch first? Quick Answer: Start Here If you want the simplest route: Start with Band of Brothers Then watch The Pacific Finish with Masters of the Air That order gives you the strongest emotional connection first, followed by a deeper and darker perspective, and finally a different viewpoint from the skies above Europe.  This is...