Gallipoli

I, honestly, have never heard of this show. I even spent 6 months in Australia, and this never came up in passing. The only reason this show was given a watch by me is because of boredom, which always tends to lead me to war shows. Anyways, this show is so darn good! I definitely would say this belongs in the same breath as Band of Brothers. IMO, nothing will ever top Band of Brothers for me, but Gallipoli was certainly very well made like it. What raises this show up on top of it just being good is the fact that Gallipoli is not well known. Anything to do with the battles here, all the Churchill stuff being hugely unknown where he failed badly at this time (everyone knows him when he took over as PM in WW2, but don't realize the failure beforehand), and the story of the ANZACS. ANZAC day is obviously very big in Australia and NZ, even having a day for it, but as Americans we know NOTHING about it. I learned while I was studying there, and I love history!

So in a nutshell this show should certainly be given a watch when you have the time to pay attention. The second episode especially was such a great window into what war is like. It's hard to imagine these days where it's a different world, but the World Wars were largely made up of just regular people. The wars before now were a lot less personal due to technology, and fighting tactics....but reality sank in hard when they learned their hated foes were just men fighting with wives, childeren and families (A "we aren't so different you and I" type thing).

As a devoted history reader, I also try to follow such shows, films, and series because I just wanna feel that "connection".

This production is far from the best historical adaptation but as a great-grandson of a Turkish martyr that fell on Gallipoli, I must admit I felt more than just a simple "connection". It honestly brought tears to my eyes at a certain point.

True, the character development is a little off. True, many moments from the show might seem cliché. Also, I don't know about all the actors but the Turkish speakers had to work on their pronunciations a little bit more.

But to see an Australian production that shows the Turks the respect that we have shown to them is just a sign of a beautiful thing in my opinion. Sure, some moments felt off, definitely. All things considered, I find this show beautiful, touching, brutally honest about some aspects of the war.

For the people who think about watching the show, I can only say that if you're looking for "Saving Private Ryan: WWI Version", you won't find it in this show. This is different. Really different. It definitely is worth a shot.

An extremely good effort. Given that this production did not have a Hollywood blockbuster budget it has to be given top marks. When I saw the previews with the 'back home' flashbacks I was worried that this would be one of those war movies where there are just flashes of action interspersed among long 'back in Australia' scenes. My fears were unfounded – back home scenes were just a few minutes at a time and did bring meaning to the story. The action was intense and brutal and very convincing. At least one critique here on IMDb said the acting was poor. I disagree. Kodi Smit-McPhee was the perfect boy soldier. He certainly didn't overact; in fact his performance was somewhat subdued (when Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino do this we call it genius acting). And I couldn't fault any of the other actors either. This show – although it is a mini-series – has made it into my top ten war movies, right alongside "Saving Private Ryan", "A Bridge Too Far", "Generation War", "Black Book", "Stalingard" and "Full Metal Jacket". On a scale of 0 to 9 I give it a 9.

We only found this on Amazon prime and decided to watch as my late maternal grandfather was a Gallipoli veteran but died before I met him.

This series is absolutely outstanding well acted, well written with no tired cliches with a capacity to shock. It is very realistic and the battle scenes startling without being overly gory.

Overall we both were amazed at this series and believe it deserves more distribution.

Overall, this was a very good series. For the most part, I thought this was a very realistic portrayal of the actual battle. There are little flaws and goofs here and there, (for instance soldiers smoking filtered cigarettes that didn't come into existence until the late 40s early 50s.), but I have a habit of spotting little details that are out of place more so than the average person. The actors portrayals of the historical characters was for the most part spot on. I did have issues with the accuracy of the soldiers in combat. There wasn't the shock and paralyzing fear that is common to soldiers engaged in combat for the first time. Additionally the post battle stress was not really portrayed well at all. Still, the series has a lot of merit and does represent the history of Galipoli well. I do recommend it!