Wow! Such a good movie.

To me, this movie is perfection.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

The ME109s used in the series have a hidden irony. They were Hispano Aviación HA-1112 M. 1. L "Buchons" which had the "body" of a Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the "soul" of a Spitfire. They were powered by a Rolls Royce Merlin engine! This required significant modifications to the 109 fuselage. Look closely at the ME109s in the series and you can see the exhaust line at the top of the fuselage and the air intake under the spinner. The DB 601A used in Luftwaffe ME109s were mounted inverted. The exhausts are near the bottom of the fuselage. Also, there is no air intake directly under the spinner. The Buchons were retirees from the Spanish Air Force.

I must say I really enjoyed every moment when I watched the whole series after buying the DVD-Box. The Music is beautifully, brilliantly fantastic. The production makes the feeling of a school class where the boys in the group are drawn to certain small gangs within the group. Some of them are really close friends while some seem like sworn enemies. It is so exiting to follow them in their journey from unexperienced boys to become real fighters. They do not really understand the seriousness until they are drawn into real action.The American (Boid Gains) does a really good job here, I can't understand why he wasn't used more in Hollywood after his brilliant performance in this successful masterpiece of TV production.Neil Dudgeon is fabulous and why didn't Jeremy Northam and Nathaniel Parker get more of their recognition from Piece of Cake I wonder.I don't really fancy WW2 war birds and that sort of military stuff but I really loved this mini series. So I suppose you don't have to be a "flyboy freak" to enjoy this mini series.

I've read several conflicting reports about the accuracy of Derek Robinson's novels. Some veterans claim that the pilots of the RAF never behaved in such a loutish manner, while others say that "Piece of Cake" is closer to the truth than most people would like to admit. Robinson researches all his books, and states that everything in them actually did happen at some point, and that he only dramatized reality by putting all the characters and events into one story. Characters like the cad Moggy Cattermole, the unbalanced Flash Gordon, or the abjectly terrified Pip Patterson are the same kind of people you'd find in an English public school -- just like the real pilots of the Royal Air Force. Robinson's artistic license places them all in the same squadron, but I don't doubt that men like them did exist in the war.The behavior of Hornet Squadron's pilots on the ground does not diminish their heroism in the air; the fact that they held off the Luftwaffe is proof enough that they deserve our respect, regardless of what they were like in person. The flawed humanity of its characters makes the sacrifice of the real pilots much easier to understand than if they were portrayed simply as selfless heroes, even if we would be more comfortable remembering them that way.The flying scenes in this series are definitely above average and should be enough to recommend it to aviation enthusiasts. A few clips here and there come from 1969's "Battle of Britain", but for the most part the scenes of Spitfires taking off and landing or flying in formation are all brand-new, including some low-level stunts involving bridges. These were real stunts performed by a real pilot -- they found the longest single-span stone bridge in the country, and flew a real Spitfire under it. It's a hell of a scene.Apart from all that, the series is very well done. The acting is great all round, particularly Neil Dudgeon as Cattermole and Richard Hope as Skelton. The script is funny and extremely quotable. After the squadron adjutant reads Churchill's speech out loud -- "Never was so much owed by so many to so few" -- one pilot asks, "Does that mean we can go home now?"

Very good mini-series, but it falls a bit short of the excellent book by Derek Robinson. Air combat sequences are taken from the film "Battle of Britain". The acting is very good across the board, however, I'd like to see some more character development and lines for a few of the characters. See the film, but read the book as well. Also recommended are Derek Robinson's "Hornet's Sting", "Goshawk Squadron", and "A Good Clean Fight".