The reviews are warm almost across the board. Most critics praise the series for following one company through the whole war from the soldiers’ point of view, and for staying with ordinary men rather than generals or set pieces. Several credit the interviews with surviving veterans for its grounded, unforced feel, and the later notices, written a decade or two on, find it has held up and still lands hard. Damian Lewis is the performance most often named, and the ensemble around him is repeatedly called a strength.
The reservations are small and scattered. The Guardian has minor quibbles with how the action scenes are shot, while still calling the series marvellous. The one mixed rating, from The Times, sits oddly beside prose that finds the series fresh, gripping and moving; the star count is more cautious than the words. Nobody dissents in substance, and the spread is narrow.