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PATHFINDERS - THE COMPLETE SERIES - DVD - NEW ITEM
26 April 2016
"Pathfinders": an enjoyable collector's item if war stories are your bag.
When I was young, adventure yarns drew for inspiration on fictional heroics in great wars decisively won by the good chaps rather than on American "super-hero" comics. In principle, this is a standard made-to-entertain offering on World War 2, in the form of a television series comprising free-standing episodes, all figuring the personnel of an imagined crack Lancaster bomber squadron. The series has all the vices associated with its genre: exculpatory yarns about bombing being aimed with uncanny accuracy at targets of military relevance, evil Gestapo agents impatient to torture all-comers, improbable derring-do, a caste-free Royal Air Force defending the "Free World" armed principally with exuberant youthfulness and comradeship, facile moral predicaments overcome in the most facile way by the pluck of Tom Brown's successors and pretty much whatever else you can think of. Many of the situations, and some entire episodes, defy probability. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of interest in the early appearances of actors who later made reputations for themselves, the footage of radio-controlled props deftly cut in with studio stock footage, and the episodes make for solid escapist entertainment without the tackier aspects which somewhat soil the escapist value of some modern adventure cock-and-bull tales. This goes on the shelf between "Secret army" and feature films such as "The great escape", "The longest day" and "A bridge too far".