Age of Tanks

The script is very shallow. Only the State approved version when possible. When not possible, just erase the whole thing. And the "mistakes" are there to mislead. Austria from the beginning is actually an Empire against which the French have spent enormous sums of money to destroy. Germany is actually Prussia. And so on. And the usual moral statements about the evils of personal profit and how happy the peasants were for they were given the chance to die for the aristocracy.

Impressive narrative, cohesive in treating the subject (tanks). The most likeable part is that it gives a brief picture of tank's evolution over the entire series, without getting lost. Neither is the series too technical nor too naive which is desirable to attract more viewers. They also have short interview clips about tank personnel of WW-II. They also mention about the notable commanders, tank designers, major events and tank manufacturing sites.

I'm 32 years old and I've watched almost all tank documentaries in all my experience. I mean all History Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Viasat History HD and even independent ones. But this one is far and away the best.

This doc has 4 episodes and first one starts with the first tank British "Mark I" from 1916 and the last episode ends with the last modern tank Russian T-14 Armata which was started to produce in 2015. In all 4 episodes we witness the development of main battle tanks from World War I until today.

It's a French documentary and there is English dub and subtitle option on Netflix. The best thing of this documentary is "objectivity". First and foremost it's not a nationalist production. It's based on the real historic events from WWI, WWII, Korean War, Cold War, Yom Kippur War, First Chechen War, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In all events, the importance of tanks is explained very well. In some parts, progress of tanks and anti-tank systems are explained but clarification of which one is better is not enough. Also I expected to learn about Korean K2 Black Panther, Chinese Type 99 A2, Israeli Merkava Mk IV, Japan Type 10, Russian T-90MS, British Challenger 2, French Leclerc with the AZUR urban protection kit, German Leopard 2A7+ and the most importantly German Leopard 2 Revolution and Turkish Altay main battle tanks. These tanks are enough to represent the future of main battle tanks as fifth episode. Despite all, this production is the best of all main battle tank docs with its fulfilling, realistic, historical and unbiased characteristics. A masterpiece documentary.

This sweeping series starts with the creation of the tank as an powerful innovation which helped to overcome the grinding deadlock of WW1 and follows tank use and design through to modern day questions about whether tanks may be obsolete. I am not a 'tank expert', and from my point of view this documentary contained some new and fascinating insights that I had not come across before, often via interesting interviews. In particular, Russian and French experiences with tank development and tank tactics stand out. However, the series also inexplicably leaves a huge amount of widely available and important information out. The almost complete absence of commentary on US and Commonwealth tanks from WW2 was particularly conspicuous (apart from a short part on the US Sherman tank). It's commentary on the geopolitical contexts of the events being described also sometimes seemed to be lop-sided at times.

If you want a different perspective on tanks and tank warfare, you may enjoy this series. However, be aware that it skims over or completely omits significant events and details, and conveys a number of interpretations and opinions as though they were facts.

Overall it was a decent basic overview of the history of the tank with contextualizing narrative to explain the reasoning behind the changes over time. I found it to be a good approach to the subject and would like to see similar series about fighters, bombers, and helicopters. The narration and score were engaging, but not excessively dramatized the way that American documentaries tend to be.

There seems to be a pretty mild bias in favor of French and Russian tanks throughout, although nothing major until the end. The other reviews complaining of extreme bias one way or another seem silly and unfounded to me. The very ending turning into a bit of Russian propaganda about the fictional T-14 is pretty bad though. The bit about 2300 to be delivered by 2020 was good for a chuckle.