If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Vera Brittain is a bright young woman growing up in a middle class Derbyshire family in 1914. Her world seems to be a constant fight with her father to be allowed to go to University like her brother.Suddenly (this is doubly true) the Great War starts and throws the whole of society into turmoil. Vera goes to University but all her menfolk, brothers and friends join up to fight the Boche.By 1916 they are ALL dead including her dear brother and fiancé. Vera gives up University and signs up as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) aka a nurse working just behind the front lines in a Field Hospitals in France and Belgium. The suffering of the men - both British and German (Vera gets to be one of the few nurses who look after German casualties) is well represented.Vera Brittain was the mother of the British politician Shirley Williams. We owe her a lot for showing us the pain and heartache of that now almost vanished generation.This TV adaptation is a very good representation of the book of the same name. It was for me, as a young man when I first saw it - one unmissable show while it was on.Watch it - you may learn something of those terrible times