30 TV shows and films to mark the 80th anniversary of&#8230;

D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in history and even though the statistics are staggering, it’s tiny details that really allow the events of 1944 to hit home. This powerful three-part series, best described as a mash-up of war epic Saving Private Ryan and a scholarly documentary, uses these human details to great effect.

Made in conjunction with the Imperial War Museums and the Open University, D-Day: The Unheard Tapes was created by scouring museums, university archives and private collections around the world for original audio recordings by people who either fought on D-Day or witnessed it. Some recordings, including those made by defeated German soldiers, have never previously been digitised or even heard in public before. To make these even more engrossing, young actors dressed in 40s and 50s civvies and filmed in period-style parlours were hired to lip-sync along to the audio. These accounts, reinforced by archive footage and dramatic re-enactments, bring the Normandy landings to life as never before. (Three episodes)

Made in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, D-Day: The Unheard Tapes brings to life the experiences of those who actually took part in the Normandy landings

Saving Private Ryan

Tom Hanks stars in director Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-laden war movie

Year: 1998

Certificate: 15

Few, if any, films capture the bloody, confusing, tragic sensory overload of combat as powerfully as Saving Private Ryan. The film’s opening sequence recounting the attempts of soldiers to come ashore on Omaha beach in Normandy during the D-Day landings is one of the most powerful pieces of filmmaking imaginable.

Shot over four weeks with 1,500 extras, it genuinely felt as if it dropped audiences into the swirling heart of the conflict – director Steven Spielberg deserved the Oscar the film bagged him for that sequence alone.

There is so much to relish here, but Tom Hanks must be singled out for his magnificently understated turn as the determined officer reluctantly leading his battered platoon on a mission to rescue a single soldier (Matt Damon). (169 minutes)

Poignant personal D-Day tales told through extraordinary artefacts

Year: 2024

Fiona Bruce introduces this commemorative special while walking along the windswept beaches of Normandy where, 80 years ago, the largest seaborne invasion in history took place. As they track down objects that tell the story of that campaign, the Roadshow experts strike just the right balance between informative and emotional.

The first antique is the unmistakable beret worn by Field Marshal Montgomery, known affectionately as ‘Monty’, who commanded the ground forces in the initial stages of the D-Day landings; Monty’s grandson reveals what the military leader was like at home. Other objects to look out for include a dummy parachute that was used as a decoy during Operation Overlord, an unexpectedly humorous illustrated diary, and even a children’s toy made by a corporal for his daughter. Plus, we meet some of the brave men and women who fought against the Nazis.

Fiona Bruce presents a commemorative special of Antiques Roadshow, which will use objects from the time to tell the story of the D-Day invasion 80 years ago

The Longest Day

A star-packed Hollywood account of the events of the D-Day landings

Year: 1962

Certificate: pg

Arguably one of the greatest war movies ever made, this black-and-white classic tells the story of the D-Day landings from start to finish and from a multitude of different viewpoints, from the commanders who drove the operation to the individual soldiers on the ground – on both sides – who fought for every inch of beach.

Based on Cornelius Ryan’s impressively detailed history of the day, the film itself was a passion project of legendary producer Darryl F Zanuck who assembled an incredibly star-studded cast for the movie: John Wayne, Kenneth More, Richard Todd, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Peter Lawford, Rod Steiger, Leo Genn, Gert Fröbe, Curd Jürgens, George Segal and Robert Wagner are among those who feature in the almost three-hour long epic. (178 minutes)

Vicky McClure: My Grandad’s War

The actor visits Normandy with her 97-year-old grandfather, war veteran Ralph

Year: 2023

Line Of Duty star Vicky McClure embarks on an emotional trip with her ‘legend’ of a grandfather, Ralph, to learn about his role in the most extraordinary single day of the Second World War – D-Day. Vicky wants to understand how a young lad from Nottingham found himself in the Royal Navy and at the centre of a world-changing battle on the Normandy beaches, and Ralph, still sprightly at the grand old age of 97, is happy to talk his granddaughter through his early life.

The highlight, though, is when the pair return to Normandy, to the beach Ralph last visited almost 80 years ago.

Line of Duty star Vicky McClure goes on an emotional trip with her grandfather Ralph to learn about his role in the liberation

Masters Of The Air

Epic fact-based WWII drama about US airmen in Britain

Year: 2024

Watch now on Apple TV+

Like Band Of Brothers but about the US airmen who flew out of the UK during the Second World War, this nine-part drama is a very impressive piece of work. Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin (which also gave us Band Of Brothers and its sequel, The Pacific), it’s stacked with talent in every area, most obviously in the creation of the aerial sequences and in its cast, which boasts Austin Butler (Elvis), Callum Turner (Fantastic Beasts), Barry Keoghan (Saltburn) and even Doctor Who himself – Ncuti Gatwa – among the aviators flying with the 100th Bomb Group.

The 100th fly their bombing missions in daytime, so the impressive aerial sequences are visible in all their glory, and it’s not just CGI bringing them to life, either. Amblin used a neat combination of replica B-17 Flying Fortresses and digital wizardry when they were filming in the UK, and built a full-scale air base too – so it all feels fairly real. We also see the social side of the airmen’s lives, and the impact those missions had as the series goes beyond the British Isles and even into a PoW camp. It’s true that the tone of the whole thing is rather American, but then it is an American story so that seems fair enough. And it’s hard to resent all that Hollywood money when it brings this kind of big-screen scale to the small screen. (Nine episodes)

The Last Rifleman

A WWII veteran flees his care home for France

Year: 2023

Certificate: 15

On the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 2014, Second World War veteran Bernard Jordan secretly escaped from his care home in East Sussex. He then took a bus and a ferry to France and made his way to Normandy, where the 89-year-old took part in the commemorations. It’s an inspiring story and the fuel for this drama, which stars Pierce Brosnan as Artie Crawford – a widowed veteran who does much the same thing but from Northern Ireland, and with the goal of paying his final respects to his best friend.

Brosnan brings a neat dose of star power to the film, although, to be honest, when you have a story this good it barely needs it – and through the make-up that took two hours to transform him into a 92-year-old each day on set, you might not even recognise him. Clemence Poesy (Tenet) and Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot) are two other familiar faces in a solidly made and moving tribute to the spirit of a great generation. (99 minutes)

D-Day: Hour By Hour

This retro-feeling documentary uses archive footage and sound to tell the story of the famous battle

Year: 2024

This evocative documentary stands out from other D-Day programmes because it uses a combination of archive sound material (including soldiers’ testimonies, wartime songs and rare radio broadcasts) and real footage to tell the story of the Allied operation in Nazi-occupied France.

There is no narration, so the programme feels very immediate as we watch – sometimes in colour – the brave men sailing in ships and fighting on the Normandy beaches. The testimonies reveal how they really felt at the time: ‘I was scared. I was scared, because I knew there were going to be a lot of casualties on the beach,’ says one soldier.

Erased: WWII’s Heroes of Color

Idris Elba’s docuseries highlights the brave – and long overlooked – exploits of black and Asian soldiers during WWII

Year: 2024

While movies such as The Great Escape have immortalised the heroism of white British and US soldiers during the Second World War, very little is known of similar heroics performed by black and Asian soldiers – in fact, more than eight million people of colour served with the Allies. This important four-part documentary series addresses this anomaly by highlighting their overlooked stories. Luther star Idris Elba, whose grandad was a World War Two veteran, narrates and produces the show. He has said that the aim of the series is to ‘restore these unsung heroes to their rightful place’.

With this in mind, the documentary attempts to re-evaluate four of the war’s greatest battles – Pearl Harbor, Dunkirk, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge – through recorded interviews, re-enactments and archive footage (although videos of non-white soldiers are rare). And historians explain why soldiers of colour were written out of history in the first place. (4 episodes)

World On Fire

Catch the people caught in the eye of the storm as the Second World War burns

Year: 2019

Certificate: 15

Spanning four countries and more than a dozen interlinked characters, this seven-part Second World War drama from Peter Bowker (The A Word, Blackpool) doesn’t lack ambition.

From a young Englishman trying to smuggle his girlfriend out of Poland as the Nazis invade to an American journalist (Helen Hunt) in Berlin, an anti-war family in Manchester and a gay couple in Paris, it aims to tell the conflict’s human side.

And it manages it fairly well, using a dash of spectacle and some very fine actors, including Sean Bean and Lesley Manville, to give heft to what might be a slightly soapy narrative, but is no less involving for it. (Seven episodes)

Guy Martin’s D-Day Landing

Daredevil Guy re-enacts the D-Day parachute jumps

Year: 2019

The motorcycle racer turned TV presenter marked the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in his own inimitable style back in 2019. First, he leads a team of experts as they restore an original C-47 Dakota plane, which was rescued from an Arkansas scrapyard by a Second World War enthusiast. Then, they fly the plane to Normandy, where – in tribute to the thousands of Allied troops who did just this during Operation Overlord in 1944 – he’ll jump out and parachute down to Earth.

This two-hour film brings one of the Second World War’s most audacious and complex operations to vivid life, while the clips of surviving D-Day veterans sharing their memories are the most moving and enjoyable part of the programme. We hear from former soldiers such as Bob Stoodley, one of the Pathfinders, the first men to jump out of the planes with the job of planting radio beacons to guide the aircraft to their positions. Even though Bob was then 95, his memories of that day are as clear as ever. Sadly Bob won’t be at the 80th memorial events, as he died in 2021.

Fury

Brad Pitt plays a tank commander in this gritty war film

Year: 2014

Certificate: 15

Seen through the eyes of a young, inexperienced new addition to a US Sherman tank crew, this Second World War drama follows an ever decreasing platoon of tanks behind enemy lines in Germany as the Second World War reaches its desperate, bloody final stages. At first, rookie Private Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) cannot deal with the brutal reality of war – in particular, the fact that he has to pull the trigger.

In a shocking encounter early in the film, Norman fails to shoot two boy Nazis, which results in an ambush that destroys one of the tanks and kills its crew. It’s the first of many horrifying incidents that make Norman the soldier he needs to be. The battle scenes are devastatingly realistic, and Brad Pitt stars as tank commander ‘Wardaddy’, playing a hero in a film about all the war’s fallen heroes. (134 minutes)

D-Day The Sixth Of June

A heady mix of war drama and romance set hours before the Normandy landings

Year: 1956

Certificate: pg

Watch now on Prime Video

The title of this drama is best ignored – Henry Koster’s film is more epic romance than triumphant flag-waver. The story focuses on the love triangle between Robert Taylor, Richard Todd and elegant Dana Wynter.

It’s a few hours before D-Day and, despite having to storm the Normandy beaches and take on the Nazis, Todd’s commando John Wynter still has time to get soppy over Valerie (Dana). But she also attracts the attentions of a US paratrooper, played by Robert Taylor. And as the two men and their company prepare for the assault, we see their romances with the same woman in flashback. It’s stirring stuff, though you’ll need a fresh hanky or two at the ready. Available to rent or buy. (106 minutes)

Darkest Hour

Watch Gary Oldman’s Oscar-winning turn as Winston Churchill

Year: 2017

Certificate: pg

Watch now on Prime Video

Here’s a film that shows there’s more to playing Winston Churchill than having a paunch, smoking a cigar and growling through your dialogue. In 1940, Churchill takes over as Prime Minister from Neville Chamberlain, and the film focuses on the opposition that he faced from those who sought to appease Hitler and how, in the corridors of Whitehall and beyond, the mood shifted.

An Oscar-winning Gary Oldman as Churchill makes the statesman more than the cartoonish character we have come to know, giving great weight to the power and eloquence of his speeches (including ‘We shall fight on the beaches’), while not ignoring his famous eccentricities. It’s a gripping political thriller, with Churchill as its one-of-a-kind hero. Available to rent or buy. (125 minutes)

D-Day 80: We Were There

Rachel Burden listens to first-hand accounts of the Normandy Landings

Year: 2024

Eighty years after Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944, the BBC has been gathering first-hand accounts from the UK’s D-Day veterans – some now more than 100 years of age. The Radio 5 Live presenter Rachel Burden traces their stories in Normandy and hears memories of the massive beach invasion and the battles that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War in Europe.

Hearing such men and women talk of unbelievable acts of bravery in such an unassuming fashion is humbling indeed. ‘I’m not a hero,’ says one veteran ‘I’m definitely not a hero. The only ones who are heroes are the ones that don’t come back.’

Foyle’s War

Classic crime drama steeped in authentic wartime detail

Year: 2002-2015

Certificate: pg

Watch now on Acorn TV

For years a staple of Sunday night viewing, this classic award-winning series was dubbed ‘a triumph from start to finish’ by the Wall Street Journal.

Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen), a widower, and his driver, vicar’s daughter Samantha ‘Sam’ Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), are based in Hastings and catch crooks on the south coast of England during and just after the Second World War. It’s part police procedural, part pretty accurate depiction of everyday life in wartime Britain.

Created by prolific screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz, it has intelligent scripts and plots that present complex moral dilemmas and often explore the myth that everyone pulled together against the threat from the Nazis. Despite the common enemy, there is still crime, there are still wrong ‘uns and the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor.

Excellent performances from Kitchen as the upstanding detective and Weeks as his enthusiastic sidekick make this a real TV treat. (Eight series).

Apocalypse D-Day

Examination of the success and failures of the D-Day landings

Year: 2024

Certificate: 18

Watch on Sky/NOW from Thursday 6 June.

The preparation that went into the D-Day landings was immense. Not only were there political and military difficulties to be overcome, but there were also huge practical problems to be beaten. New types of landing craft and weapons were developed, floating harbours were constructed, and tests and practise runs were carried out in secret.

Part one of this two-episode documentary series details all that, charting how the Allied preparations also took into account lessons learned in the failed Dieppe Raid of 1942 as they calculated just how to move more than 150,000 men across the English Channel. Part two looks at the day itself, detailing just where the plans went right and where they went wrong, using eye-witness accounts of the landings and archive footage to striking effect. (Two episodes)

Band Of Brothers

Epic World War II drama series starring Damian Lewis

Year: 2001

Certificate: 18

Executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, this epic ten-part drama follows a single company of American paratroopers through the course of World War II. Under the command of Major Winters (Damian Lewis), Easy Company battles through some of the war’s biggest moments (including the Normandy invasion, Operation Market Garden and the liberation of a concentration camp), but this truly fantastic series always keeps the focus firmly on the human beings involved, giving its individual performers plenty of time to shine.

Which goes some way to explaining its stellar cast: As well as Lewis, watch out too for David Schwimmer, Donnie Wahlberg, Marc Warren, Dexter Fletcher and Colin Hanks, to name just a few of the famous faces fighting for screen time. (Ten episodes)

D-Day: The Soldiers’ Story

The story of the young men who made the landings

Year: 2024

Watch now on My5

It seems like an odd place to start, but historian Giles Milton doesn’t begin his detailed and engaging two-part film about the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy. No, he begins it in Wales, on the shingle coves that the D-D planners turned into mock-ups of Hitler’s defences as they trained their forces for what to expect when their landing craft hit the beaches of northern France.

Milton’s series reveals a meticulously organised operation that was months in the planning, but the films really come to life when he presents the stories of the individual soldiers – many little more than boys – called upon to carry out the invasion. When he finally does get to Normandy to visit the sites themselves, Giles chats to 100-year-old veteran trooper William Gladden, who, at the age of 20, flew in on a glider to help capture key bridges at the start of D-Day. (Two episodes)

D-Day: 100 Days To Beat The Third Reich

A day-by-day account of D-Day and the liberation of Normandy

Year: 2024

Watch on Sky/NOW from Thursday 6 June.

Colourised footage takes centre stage in this two-part documentary about not just the D-Day landings themselves but the bitter and brutal battles that followed as the Allied forces fought their way across Normandy. Told in chronological fashion, charting events day by day, it makes for compelling viewing.

As an overview of the whole campaign, it is magnificently detailed, covering the preparations for the landings as well as the taking of the Normandy beaches themselves, but also not shying away from the protracted close-up conflicts with Nazi forces that were required as the invaders pushed on across northern France with the end goal of liberating Paris. (Two episodes)

The Plane That Led D-Day

The battle to restore a vintage plane that played a key role in D-Day

Year: 2019

Ahead of the D-Day landings themselves, paratroopers were dropped in Northern France with the aim of capturing key points and hindering German opposition. In 2015, one of the aircraft that flew them – a C-47 paratrooper plane, nicknamed That’s All, Brother – was discovered standing forgotten in a junk yard and a struggle commenced to restore it to its former glory in time for the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

Told over three episodes, this series intersperses accounts of the restoration efforts with the 1944 story of its mission to land paratroopers. It all culminates in the attempt to pilot the revamped plane on a dangerous transatlantic flight – with relatives of the original crew onboard – to pay tribute to the wartime heroes who flew in it. (Three episodes)

D-Day: Secrets Of The Frontline Heroes

How the D-Day landings were immortalised on film

Year: 2024

The films and photographs of the D-Day landings are some of the most iconic images of the entire Second World War, capturing with vivid intensity the rush and danger of disembarking from landing craft under intense fire onto the beaches of Normandy. But someone actually had to be manning the cameras providing that footage.

This gripping and revealing hour-long film gathers together decades of archive material and expert interviews to tell the stories of the men who braved enemy fire themselves to capture images of the landings and beyond. Hollywood directors George Stevens and John Ford were among those who filmed documentary footage on the front line and returned to tell the tale, but many of the photographers and cameramen died in action on those days in 1944. (53 minutes)

D-Day: The Light Of Dawn

Two-part documentary recounting the events of the D-Day landings

Year: 2022

As the sun rose on the 6 June 1944, the grey light over the English Channel revealed an incredible sight as 7,000 ships supported by 20,000 planes began the crossing towards Normandy. The opening of this two-part documentary conjures up a striking, almost poetic image of the military might assembled at the start of D-Day, but it doesn’t shy away from the brutal realities of the conflict either, highlighting the huge loss of life in a day that saw close to 10,000 men on each side perish.

Notable for attempting to tell the story of D-Day and the weeks that followed from not just the Allied but also the German side, this is an impressive slice of documentary filmmaking. (Two episodes)

Eyewitness: D-Day

The story of five key moments that changed the course of D-Day

Year: 2019

Watch now on Disney+

Dramatic reconstructions bring to life events from Operation Overlord (and the preparations for it) as actors give voice to the recollections of the members of the armed forces involved. The film centres on five key moments on which the success or failure of the operation hinged, ranging from a secret mini-submarine mission just days before to the battles fought by paratroops, and forces landed by gliders to stop German tank reinforcements from reaching the beaches.

The meshing of archive footage with the new dramatic reconstructions gives the film the immediacy of a drama, and seeing actors of roughly the same age as the participants in the battle reminds you of just how young the men in uniform actually were.

Memories Of D-Day

Recalling Operation Overlord through the images and recollections of veteran photographers

Year: 2019

Among the 150,000 troops who landed on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944 were a number of British, American and Canadian photographers and filmmakers, charged with capturing a record of events. This memorable and effecting documentary zooms in on the British contingent of 20 British army cameramen whose mission was to capture events on the Juno, Sword and Gold beaches.

Full of recollections from the cameramen themselves – most of whom were soldiers trained up by the army photographic unit – it paints an indelible picture of the risks taken in order to capture the image of the war that the army wanted (for propaganda as well as historical purposes). Many of the cameramen went unarmed onto the beaches, often barely protected from the tempest of enemy fire surrounding them. (60 minutes)

Churchill

Brian Cox stars as Winston Churchill in an account of the days leading up to 6 June 1944

Year: 2017

Certificate: pg

Watch now on Prime Video

If ever an actor seems born to play Winston Churchill, it’s Brian Cox. The Succession star is superb in this story of the events leading up to D-Day, capturing not just the bulldoggish public persona of the British Prime Minister, but also the battered and damaged private side of a man struggling to lead his nation through a war in which he himself is increasingly unsure of victory.

It takes some historical liberties, but Cox’s performance carries it along, never more so than in his scenes with Miranda Richardson as his wife Clementine Churchill and with Mad Men’s John Slattery as the bombastic American commander of the Allied forces General Dwight D Eisenhower.

Greatest Events Of World War II In Colour

Colourised, rarely seen footage of some of WWII’s key moments

Year: 2019

Certificate: 15

Watch now on Netflix

Black-and-white imagery can be incredibly striking, but it can also have the effect of distancing modern viewers from the events being shown. This landmark series sidesteps that effect by painstakingly colourising footage, giving the rarely seen footage on display here the immediacy of a modern news broadcast. Couple that with expert historical analysis and a sonorous and impressive narration by the actor Derek Jacobi and the effect is truly memorable.

Each of the ten episodes focuses on a different major incident from the war, from the Battle of Britain and Pearl Harbor to the Siege of Stalingrad and the liberation of Buchenwald. D-Day features in episode six, as the events of the day (and the months and years leading up to the landings) are succinctly and powerfully summed up. (Ten episodes)

D-Day: The Forecast That Won The War

How weather forecasts dictated the D-Day timetable – and changed history

Year: 2024

Certificate: 18

Watch now on My5

Originally, D-Day was intended to take place on 5 June 1944. If it had gone ahead on that day – as storms swept across the channel – then there’s a very real chance that the bulk of the 156,000 men who landed that day might have perished at sea and the liberation of Europe from the Nazis might never have happened.

This intriguing documentary tells the story of the weather forecasters who convinced General Eisenhower to delay, arguing that a storm was coming on 5 June, but that the conditions a day later should have cleared enough for the troops to make the crossing. Using interviews and dramatic reconstructions it focuses on Maureen Sweeney, a postmistress in the west of Ireland whose isolated weather observations helped the experts to correctly predict the shifting weather patterns and change the course of the war. (65 minutes)

D-Day: The Unseen Footage

Archive footage of the campaign revealed for the first time

Year: 2024

Watch now on My5

‘Everybody knows about the landings on 6 June, but very few people could tell you what happened in June, July and August, and how the battle for Normandy actually ended,’ explains one of the experts assembled for this impressive and hard-hitting documentary. Awe-inspiring and perilous though they were, the Normandy landings were just the beginning of an 85-day campaign to wrest control of northern France back from the Germans.

This film recounts the months that followed, using little-seen footage culled from the hundreds of hours of film shot by the cameramen who covered the battle. It paints a picture of a vicious and dirty war that left lasting marks on the landscape, the people who lived there and the soldiers of both sides. (60 minutes)

D-Day Remembered: Minute By Minute

Chronological first-hand stories from D-Day itself told over two episodes

Year: 2021