Run Time: Approximately 11 Hours with each episode approximately 51 minutes in length.

Background:
In 1912 the world gave birth to Ronald Frederick Delderfield, an educated Englishman and popular twentieth century playwright and novelist. Before the bulk of his writing career began, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1939, where he served in World War II with tours of duty in France and Belgium. In 1945 he was discharged from military service, where he returned to writing. Throughout the remainder of his writing career he wrote and published various plays and novels. Toward the very end of his life in 1972 he published a novel entitled To Serve Them All My Days.

This novel reflects upon the story of a troubled young man, who served in World War I and focuses about his life serving at Bamfylde School as a schoolmaster. Like most writers the story was developed from experiences in Delderfield's life. Though he did not use exact interpretations of events that occurred or people he met, but rather abstractions of various events and individuals to produce Bamfylde School and its community. Later in 1980 screenplay writer Andrew Davies (known for Bridget Jones's Diary [review]) wrote an adaptation of Delderfield's novel for a 13 episode television miniseries. The miniseries was directed by three different directors, Ronald Wilson (episodes 1-6), Peter Jefferies (episodes 7-9, 11-13), and Terence Dudley (episode 10).

In the early twentieth century the British public school system was not exactly what one would consider necessarily public. While the schools were supported by the government, they weren't always directly funded. The public schools relied heavily upon tuition and private party donations for maintenance, expansion, and every day-to-day activities. The concept of the public school system was that it was public in a sense that anyone could attend, so long they could afford the tuition. As a general notion some of these schools also held Officer Training Corps (OTC) programs, where enrolled students after completing their studies would join the military. The story of To Serve Them All My Days the main setting is on campus of one of these British public schools.

The Story:
After three years of military service Lieutenant David Powlett-Jones (John Duttine), Powlett-Jones was removed from active duty after a leg wound and suffering from shell shock. In World War I shell shock became a serious health issue for many fighting in the war. Shell shock was a serious mental condition in which one would suffer from tiredness, irritability, giddiness, poor concentration, headaches, and finally a complete mental breakdown. Individuals in this condition could not maintain the necessary mental and physical requirements to engage in combat.

The causes of shell shock were commonly attributed to severe trauma. In the front lines individuals were plagued with traumatic situations which could include being buried alive or the striking fear caused by enemy heavy artillery fire. Generally this condition was thought to be a damaging of one's nervous system, which is a physical effect. However as it was later found, the effects of shell shock were not a physical condition, but rather a psychological condition. Because of this view the methodologies used for recovery were incorrect and as a result the majority of those with the condition never were able to fully recover.

After Powlett-Jones's three years of military service he resided in a hospital attempting recovery from shell shock. After several months he appeared to show very little progress in means of recovery. It was clear that he would no be able to return to duty. At this point he was encouraged by one of his doctors to pursue a somewhat distant lifelong dream of being a schoolmaster. This is about when the story opens with the young Powlett-Jones gaining his first teaching position at Bamfylde School. Due to the lack of formal education Powlett-Jones is unconvinced of his abilities to be an effective schoolmaster, yet the headmaster Algy Herries (Frank Middlemass) is convinced that he has the potential to be a great schoolmaster.

While the story of a former World War I veteran turned schoolmaster may seem dry and without any entertainment value, the story is extremely riveting. There are more than one fun bits of comedy, mainly due to Howarth (Alan MacNaughtan) a fellow schoolmaster and friend of Powlett-Jones who suffers from a crude temper and cynical behavior. His dry wit provides for several laughs. However the story is highly dramatic concerning the events in Powlett-Jones's life as he progresses in Bamfylde School. During which he overcomes personal demons, experiences newfound friendships, political battles with his enemies, developing relationships of romance, suffers severe losses and hardships, and the pride of positively affecting the lives of his students.

The DVD

Spoken Languages: English

Subtitles: English

Mechanics:
This television miniseries is presented on 4 dual layered DVD's. Each DVD features direct episode navigation. Each episode is comprised of 5 chapters with direct chapter menu access. Disc 1 contains Episodes 1-3 and the special features. Disc 2 and 3 contain Episodes 4-6 and 7-9 respectively. The final disc, Disc 4 contains Episodes 10-13.

Video:
This television miniseries was premiered in 1980 and is prenseted in its original television aspect of 1.33:1 ratio full frame color. Obviously the technology in this time period and the level of quality was dramatically lower then what is found today. Thus the picture quality of this feature is fairly less than average. The picture suffers from a fairly grainy picture with slight color distortions, poor focusing which results in a washed picture. There are also some scenes filmed at night, in which the lighting didn't really help. However while the picture quality is not clean and crisp, it's really not as bad as I make it sound. The picture just doesn't look great, it's still viewable and I feel that the quality fit the feature very well. As it gave an overall feeling of a classic, something older, which it was, being a story based in the early 1900's.

Sound:
The sound is presented in 2.0 Dolby Digital stereo surround in the English language. For the most part the sound is fairly clean and crisp, though there are some parts where there seems to be a slight hiss in the audio track. Among this I also had a few problems understanding dialogue with some characters due to heavy British accents. Though the mass of the dialogue was clear and easy understand.

Subtitles:
This feature also contained English overlay subtitles. The spoken dialogue matched the spoken dialogue almost flawlessly. There were a few instances when punctuation was not displayed properly, i.e. an exclamation or question mark was portrayed as something similar to /I]. Among that there were a few other "typos," but nothing so significant to warrant any unsatisfactory issues.

Extras:
R.F. Delderfield Biography: This special feature presents a written feature that explains the history of Delderfield, who wrote the novel To Serve Them All My Days. This history also entails some information in regards to the creation of the story and Delderfield's life in general.

Bamfylde Fiction & Facts: This special feature presents a somewhat brief writing about the British public school system in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Bamfylde School Song Lyrics: Each morning (and at the beginning of each episode) at the daily assembly, all the students and faculty gather together, where they sing the Bamfylde School song. This extra presents the lyrics to the song.

Other Extras: Cast Filmographies, Photo Gallery

In terms of extras, this feature did not warrant many. Being an old revival from television BBC Classic, I wouldn't have expected much. Though the R.F. Delderfield Biography and Bamfylde Fiction & Facts were both educational and insightful toward further understanding about the author of the novel and the interactions of British educational community in the early 1900's.

Final Thoughts:
As a child growing up I never got around to tuning into the Public Broadcasting Station. So I was never exposed to any of the BBC Classics that frequently aired on the channel. Similarly I'm the kind of individual who selfishly indulges in bad action films, toilet humor, and just about everything else a regular 20-something enjoys. Needless to say I'm not quite sure why I selected To Serve Them All My Days for review. I suppose I could attribute it to my growing interest in the history of warfare or I suppose it could have been my yearning to experience something slightly different.

When I first set out to review this four disc set, I had some reservations to whether I could complete the 11 hours of viewing necessary to write this review. Well after the first ten minutes I was pretty enthralled. I found the story to be very entertaining, so much that despite I had only intended to watch the first episode I ended up watching the first five hours of the miniseries. I only stopped when I realized how late it was.

Part of the reason why I found this miniseries so entertaining was due to the depth in the character development of David Powlett-Jones and the others at Bamfylde School. In fact I grew so attached to some of these characters that I was sadden to see some of the students who appeared in several of the episodes leave after they finished their studies. This is the same kind of affect that a really well developed novel has and generally in most 2 hour featured films you don't see. So in a sense it was like reading a really good book. Furthermore while the story spanned over about 20 years old David Powlett-Jones's life, the events that unraveled the story were just appealing. His trials in overcoming his mental illness caused from shell shock, the romantic courting of his future love, the contention he faced with those opposed to his believes, and the devastating traumas of life. With a very strong story and characters, there is quite a bit to enjoy.

Overall I was very pleased with the way that this story was portrayed and I found it one of the best features I've seen that come from television to DVD. While I haven't had the opportunity to read Delderfield's novel of the original story, I sincerely look forward to picking up a copy soon. Anyways I highly recommend this feature for purchase. I hope you'll get as enticed in the story of David Powlett-Jones as I have.