Best tv shows like 1914-1918
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century is a 1996 documentary series that aired on PBS. It chronicles World War I over eight episodes. It was narrated by Dame Judi Dench in the UK and Salome Jens in the United States. The series won two Primetime Emmy Awards: one for Jeremy Irons for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance, the other for Outstanding Informational Series. In 1997, it was given a Peabody Award.
IMDB Rating: 8.3
IMDB Votes: 373
Genere: Documentary, Biography, History, War
Country: UK, USA
Duration:
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like 1914-1918 (1996):
Similar in 90%
White Horse (1993)
Plot Summary:
The White Horse is a Russian TV serial broadcast in 1993. The film, in 10 episodes, was directed by Gelii Ryabov. It presents the Russian civil war in Siberia from 1917–1920 and the struggle of the White Russians under the command of Admiral Alexander Kolchak against the Bolshevik forces, until his final defeat. The cast includes: The series was the first important cinematographic production after the fall of the Soviet Union to address the subject of the Russian Revolution and Civil War from 1917 to 1920. The series presents the fates of several characters on both sides of the conflict, caught in the turmoil of events beyond their control. It also shows important events which took place in that period, such as the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, as well as the struggle of Admiral Alexander Kolchak, head of state of the counter-revolutionary Russia until his defeat by the Bolsheviks. The director does not take sides and presents the revolution and the civil war as a cruel and senseless confrontation between two parts of the people, in which nobody is a real winner and all ordinary people are losers.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 63
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
A Man Named Benito (1993)
Plot Summary:
Originally airing on Italian television, this riveting biodrama stars Antonio Banderas as Benito Mussolini. After rapidly ascending the ranks of the Socialist Party, he created a Fascist state in 1920s Italy through his use of propaganda and diplomacy and led his people in a bloody war that would ultimately result in his downfall. With Toni Bertorelli, Valentina Lainati.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 237
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Italy, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: political, historical drama
Similar in 84%
Quiet Flows the Don (2006)
Plot Summary:
With World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War as backdrop, it's an old-fashioned, blood-and-guts narrative, filled with earthly humor and a wealth of colorful characters. The story concerns the fluctuating fortunes of Grigory Melekhov, a young Cossack who is both a hero and a victim of the uprising.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 565
Genere: Drama, History, Romance, War
Country: UK, Russia, Italy
Duration: 176 min
Plot tags: epic, family saga, captivating
Similar in 85%
Deadline Gallipoli (2015)
Plot Summary:
Three journalists, Charles Bean, Ellis Ashmead Bartlett and Phillip Schuler, arrive at Gallipoli with the invading British and Allied troops in 1915. They will report the war but are prevented from getting out the true story of an unfolding disaster. From encampment in Cairo to Anzac Cove to the evacuation, this is the story of journalists who will not accept that truth be the first casualty. This is the story of the men who will not shut up. The actions of these men will help change the course of the campaign, ensure that a strategic disaster becomes a legend of human heroism, and leave an impregnable mark on each of their lives.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 854
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Australia
Duration: 197 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, captivating, realistic, historical drama, period drama
Similar in 84%
The Monocled Mutineer (1986)
Plot Summary:
The Monocled Mutineer is a British television series made by the BBC in 1986, and shown on BBC1, the first episode being transmitted on 31 August 1986, intended to head BBC1's autumn season of drama. Viewed by about ten million people, the series caused some controversy at the time, as it drove right-wing newspapers to use it as an example of what they saw as a "left-wing" bias of the BBC. The four-part serial, written by Alan Bleasdale and directed by Jim O'Brien, was an adaptation of the 1978 book of the same name by William Allison and John Fairley. A dramatisation of the life of Percy Toplis, deserter from the British Army during the First World War, it starred Paul McGann in the title role and was Bleasdale's first historical drama, and his first adaptation of someone else's work for television. The series was produced and broadcast in a period of great controversy for the BBC. During 1985 and 1986 the Peacock Committee was deciding the future of the BBC, which caused renewed pressure on it to take advertising, while at the same time the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Norman Tebbit, was monitoring the BBC for evidence of left-wing bias. During the same period there was also much criticism of the BBC's programming; a legal action was brought against the BBC over the Panorama programme Maggie's Militant Tendency, which also caused 100 Conservative MPs to sign a motion calling for the resignation of Director General Alasdair Milne and "the restoration of proper standards at the BBC".
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 384
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: UK
Duration: 310 min
Plot tags: costume drama, period drama
Similar in 77%
Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire (2008)
Plot Summary:
A thirteen hour series which focuses on the Germanic, Britannic and other barbarian tribal wars with Rome which ultimately led to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. This series is centered on the campaigns and battles with the barbarian tribes and extensive examinations of the reigns of little known Roman emperors and generals. The significance and structures of key barbarian tribes and the roles their leaders played are explored in detail. Territorial changes to the Roman Empire caused by unrelenting wars, plagues, mass starvation's and power struggles are presented in chronological historical context with extensive re-enactments. This series examines how the continuous wars with the barbarians and depletion of resources became a core cause of the Roman Empire's decline and eventual collapse.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 842
Genere: Documentary, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: epic, exciting, serious, captivating, realistic, educational, historical drama
Similar in 80%
Gallipoli (2015)
Plot Summary:
As dawn breaks on April 25, 1915, ANZAC troops go into battle on the beaches of the Gallipoli peninsula. Landing in the dark chaos, Tolly, Bevan and their mates struggle to establish a tenuous foothold on the treacherous slopes and deep ravines. They endure the next eight months on the peninsula learning lessons of survival. By the time of the final evacuation they have also learned the skills of combat and what it means to be a young man in war.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Australia
Duration: 44 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, stylized, period drama
Similar in 89%
The World Wars (2014)
Plot Summary:
The World Wars tells the story of three decades of war told through the eyes of various men who were its key players: Roosevelt, Hitler, Patton, Mussolini, Churchill, Tojo, DeGaulle and MacArthur. The documentary examines the two wars as one contiguous timeline starting in 1914 and concluding in 1945 with these unique individuals coming of age in World War I before ultimately calling the shots in World War II.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Documentary, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 270 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 76%
A Fortunate Life (1986)
Plot Summary:
Four part biopic about classic Australian author A.B. Facey (1894-1982). Born in a large impoverished family, uneducated and illiterate, he had to fend for himself since he was eight, and as a recruit in WWI, he was sent to Gallipoli.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 107
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Australia
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: historical drama
Similar in 76%
Mussolini: The Untold Story (1985)
Plot Summary:
George C. Scott, Lee Grant, Virginia Madsen, Raul Julia, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Gabriel Byrne star in this Emmy-nominated program about the rise and fall of Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Recounting his life with his wife, children and mistress, this biography (based on the recollections of Mussolini's eldest son, Vittorio) chronicles Il Duce's tyranny as he plunges Italy into the dark days of World War II.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 626
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Yugoslavia, USA
Duration: 410 min
Plot tags: family saga, historical drama, political drama
Similar in 85%
Krupp: A Family Between War and Peace (2009)
Plot Summary:
The Krupps were one of Germany's most powerful and controversial families until their downfall.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 208
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Germany
Duration: 270 min
Plot tags: captivating, historical drama
Similar in 78%
Harley and the Davidsons (2016)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story, "Harley and the Davidsons" charts the birth of this iconic bike during a time of great social and technological change beginning at the turn of the 20th century. Walter, Arthur and Bill risked their entire fortune and livelihood to launch the budding enterprise. Each of these men faced very different challenges, but it was the motorcycle that united their dreams and ambitions. Walter, Arthur, and Bill cemented Harley-Davidson's reputation as a builder of bikes that go anywhere, can ride hard and ignore all the rules. It's a legacy that has endured over 100 years - and at the heart of the brand and its loyal riders.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, History
Country: USA
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: factual, educational, semi documentary, colorful, colourful
Similar in 80%
George Washington (1984)
Plot Summary:
The early life and career of the American General and President through his participation in the Revolutionary War.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 510
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 480 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
37 Days (2014)
Plot Summary:
The story of what happened in the few weeks immediately preceding World War I.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: History
Country: UK
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: political thriller, realistic, serious, captivating, period piece, period drama
Similar in 88%
Birdsong (2012)
Plot Summary:
As an English soldier fights in the horrific trenches of northern France, he is haunted by the memories of his forbidden love affair with a French woman.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK
Duration: 165 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, epic, serious, stylized, historical drama, romantic drama, period drama, masterpiece
Similar in 81%
My Boy Jack (2007)
Plot Summary:
Author Rudyard Kipling and his wife search for their 17-year-old son after he goes missing during WWI.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: UK, USA, Ireland
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspense, tense, costume drama, touching, depressing, sad, crying, period drama
Similar in 89%
Roots: The Next Generations (1979)
Plot Summary:
The dramatization of Alex Haley's family line from post Civil War America to the writer's search for his roots.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 840 min
Plot tags: sentimental, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, epic, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, family saga
Similar in 89%
The Trench (1999)
Plot Summary:
The Trench tells the story of a group of young British soldiers on the eve of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, the worst defeat in British military history. Against this ill-fated backdrop, the movie depicts the soldiers' experience as a mixture of boredom, fear, panic, and restlessness, confined to a trench on the front lines.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: France, UK
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: independent film, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, gloomy, freeze frame
Similar in 90%
Anzacs (1985)
Plot Summary:
Anzacs was a 1985 5-part Australian miniseries set in World War I. The series follows the lives of a group of young Australian men who enlist in the 8th Battalion of the First Australian Imperial Force in 1914, fighting first at Gallipoli in 1915, and then on the Western Front for the remainder of the war. It follows in the wake of Australian New Wave war films such as Breaker Morant, Gallipoli, and precedes The Lighthorsemen. Recurring themes of these films include the Australian identity, such as mateship and larrikinism, the loss of innocence in war, and also the continued coming of age of the Australian nation and its soldiers.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 839
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Australia
Duration: 165 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, vintage, period drama
Similar in 86%
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Trenches of Hell (1999)
Plot Summary:
August, 1917. Using the name 'Henri Defense', 17 year old Indiana Jones has enlisted in the Belgian army to fight in the Great War. After all his commanding officers have been wiped out during combat in Flanders, Corporal 'Defense' is left in charge of what's left of the 9th Belgian Infantry. They are assigned to the French 14th Company and dispatched into the Battle of the Somme. When Indy is captured by the Germans, he quickly gains a reputation as an escape artist, and is sent to the maximum security prison at Dunsterstadt on the Danube.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 703
Genere: Adventure, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: psychotronic
Similar in 89%
Trotsky (2017)
Plot Summary:
The life pages of a man who changed the world but paid back everything he had. Leon Trotsky is being interviewed in Mexico city of the year 1940 by Canadian journalist Frank Jackson. During eight days they have eight interview sessions revealing the true face of Comrade Trotsky.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Russia
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags: rough, tense, suspenseful, disturbing, tragic ending, thought provoking, intellectual, surprise ending
Similar in 82%
Von Richthofen and Brown (1971)
Plot Summary:
The story of Manfred von Richtofen, the german air ace during the World War I and his struggle with the enemy aces and some jealous german officers.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Action, Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, suspenseful, realistic, psychotronic, independent film, cult film
Similar in 78%
Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
Plot Summary:
Biography of the last Russian Monarch, Tsar Nicholas II and his Tsarina, Alexandra.Czar Nicholas II, the inept monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: UK
Duration: 183 min
Plot tags: epic, tense, serious, captivating, realistic, factual, period piece, historical drama, independent film, emotional
Similar in 77%
The Diary of Anne Frank (2009)
Plot Summary:
Called the most accurate adaptation of Anne Frank’s moving diary, the film chronicles the Frank family as they flee from the Nazis in Amsterdam. Hiding behind a bookcase in a secret annex with random bombs exploding, Anne faces friction with her family, a desire for independence and the first stirrings of young love. It’s a remarkable record of a young woman’s first-hand observations of the Holocaust.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: UK
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: touching, sincere, serious, realistic, historical drama, bleak, captivating, period drama
Similar in 84%
Ike: The War Years (1979)
Plot Summary:
Ike is a 1979 television miniseries about the life of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The screenplay by Melville Shavelson was based on Kay Summersby's 1948 memoir Eisenhower Was My Boss and her 1975 autobiography, Past Forgetting: My Love Affair. Directed by Boris Sagal and Melville Shavelson, the production starred Robert Duvall as Eisenhower and Lee Remick as Kay Summersby. Film editors John Woodcock and Bill Lenny won an Eddie Award for their work and the series garnered five Emmy Award nominations.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 456
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 291 min
Plot tags: exciting, sincere, serious, realistic, saga
Similar in 90%
Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003)
Plot Summary:
A unique slant, profiling the life of Adolf Hitler as a child and his rise through the ranks of the National German Workers' Party prior to World War II.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 186 min
Plot tags: serious, bleak, captivating, realistic, disturbing, political, factual, suspense, rough, suspenseful
Similar in 87%
A Small Light (2023)
Plot Summary:
Twentysomething Miep Gies didn't hesitate when her boss Otto Frank came to her and asked her to hide his family from the Nazis during World War II. For the next two years, Miep, her husband Jan, and the other helpers watched over the eight souls in hiding in the Secret Annex. And it was Miep who found Anne’s Diary and kept it safe so Otto, the only one of the eight who survived, could later share it with the world as one of the most powerful accounts of the Holocaust.
IMDB Rating: 8.4
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 54 min
Plot tags: historical drama
Similar in 78%
Testament of Youth (2014)
Plot Summary:
Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 30000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: UK, Denmark, USA
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: touching, period piece, serious, captivating, romantic, stylized, costume drama, factual, sad, historical drama
Similar in 89%
Behind the Lines (1997)
Plot Summary:
Based on Pat Barker's novel of the same name, 'Regeneration' tells the story of soldiers of World War One sent to an asylum for emotional troubles. Two of the soldiers meeting there are Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, two of England's most important WW1 poets.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: UK, Canada
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, independent film
Similar in 85%
Band of Brothers (2001)
Plot Summary:
Drawn from interviews with survivors of Easy Company, as well as their journals and letters, Band of Brothers chronicles the experiences of these men from paratrooper training in Georgia through the end of the war. As an elite rifle company parachuting into Normandy early on D-Day morning, participants in the Battle of the Bulge, and witness to the horrors of war, the men of Easy knew extraordinary bravery and extraordinary fear - and became the stuff of legend. Based on Stephen E. Ambrose's acclaimed book of the same name.
IMDB Rating: 9.4
IMDB Votes: 508000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 594 min
Plot tags: epic, heroic, captivating, tense, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, historical drama, exciting