World on Fire was supposed to return a little sooner than it did, but the pandemic meant that its second series has arrived four years after the first. The idea that real-world events might intrude on its storytelling is apt, given that much of this sweeping, epic war drama is concerned with how conflict affects everyday life, and how adaptable people can, and must, be when everything is turned upside down.
Writer and creator Peter Bowker (Blackpool, The A Word) has moved the action forward just slightly to 1941, and translator Harry Chase is temporarily back at home in Cheshire, having brought his new wife, Kasia (Zofia Wichlacz), back from Poland with him. Lesley Manville continues to play Harry’s waspish mother Robina with a hint of the Maggie Smith/Dowager Countess to her; her compassion is not entirely absent, but it is buried deeply in the weeds of propriety and blunt proclamations about the state of things. “I doubt that the Germans are interested in Cheshire,” she says, drily, as bombs rain down on Manchester. She claims to be unafraid of strong emotion: “I just disapprove of it.”
