1970s War & Politics TV Shows

The 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital is stuck in the middle of the Korean war. With little help from the circumstances they find themselves in, they are forced to make their own fun. Fond of practical jokes and revenge, the doctors, nurses, administrators, and soldiers often find ways of making wartime life bearable.

World War II drama about covert organisation Lifeline helping allied airmen escape after being shot down in occupied Europe, working with the Resistance and hiding from the Gestapo.

The dramatized World War II adventures of US Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington and his Marine Attack Squadron 214, AKA The Black Sheep Squadron.

Churchill's People is a British anthology series based on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies. 26 episodes were produced by the BBC and initially broadcast from 30 December 1974 to 23 June 1975.

Acclaimed blackly comic historical drama series. Set amidst a web of power, corruption and lies, it chronicles the reigns of the Roman emperors - Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and finally Claudius.

Enemy At The Door is a British television drama series made by London Weekend Television for ITV. The series was shown between 1978 and 1980 and dealt with the German occupation of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, during the Second World War. The programme generated a certain amount of criticism in Guernsey, particularly for being obviously filmed on Jersey despite being ostensibly set on Guernsey. The series also marked the TV debut of Anthony Head as a member of the island resistance. The theme music was by Wilfred Josephs.

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Colditz is a British television series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974. The series deals with Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle when designated Oflag IV-C during World War II, and their many attempts to escape captivity, as well as the relationships formed between the various nationalities and their German captors.

Written and filmed to reflect the reality of life in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines in the 1970s, most stories focus on the Captain and his fellow officers, with subplots dealing with life on the lower decks. Episodes typically featured a variety of events at sea (the Cold War, smuggling, the evacuation of civilians from crisis-hit places, etc.), as well as the personal lives of officers and ratings and the impact their personal lives had on their professional lives and duties.

Berlin, Germany, 1935. The day Karl Weiss, a Jewish painter, and Inga Helms, a Christian woman, marry, is the one in which both of them and the entire Weiss family are caught up in the maelstrom of the Nazi regime, the storms of World War II and the horrors of the criminal Final Solution, the Holocaust, the Shoah; while Erik Dorf, an ambitious lawyer, undertakes his fall into hell at the hands of the sinister Reinhard Heydrich.

Chronicles the story of the Adams political family over a 150-year span, including John Adams (drafter and signer of the Declaration, accomplished diplomat, and the 2nd President of the U.S.), his wife Abigail Adams, his son John Quincy Adams (acclaimed Secretary of State, the 6th President, and prominent abolitionist Congressman), grandson Charles Francis Adams, Congressman and Ambassador to Great Britain during the Civil War, and much-heralded members of the fourth generation Henry Brooks Adams, the historian and author of the novel Democracy, and Charles Francis Adams II, the industrialist.

A documentary series that gives a historical account of the events of World War II, from its roots in the 1920s to the aftermath and the lives it profoundly influenced.

Manhunt is a World War II drama series consisting of 26 episodes, produced by London Weekend Television in 1969 and broadcast nationwide.

The Sandbaggers is a British television drama series about men and women on the front lines of the Cold War. Set contemporaneously with its original broadcast on ITV in 1978 and 1980, The Sandbaggers examines the effect of the espionage game on the personal and professional lives of British and American intelligence specialists.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a seven-part BBC2 spy drama written by Arthur Hopcraft, adapted from John le Carré's eponymous 1974 novel. The serial, which stars Alec Guinness, Alexander Knox, Ian Richardson, Michael Jayston, Bernard Hepton, Anthony Bate, Ian Bannen, George Sewell and Michael Aldridge, was broadcast from 10 September to 22 October 1979. George Smiley, the ageing master spy of the Cold War and once heir-apparent to Control, is brought back out of retirement to flush out a top level mole within the Circus. Smiley must travel back through his life and murky workings of the Circus to unravel the net spun by his nemesis Karla 'The Sandman' of the KGB and reveal the identity of the mole before he disappears.

Behind the scenes at the White House during eight administrations, as told by the people who work there.

In 1945, during the final months of the Second World War, a group of soldiers perform for the Royal Artillery concert party, with comic acts and musical numbers for others prior to their departure for the frontlines. The party avoids partaking in combat duty; thus, the soldiers love being part of the outfit. Some even daydream of becoming world-famous actors when they leave the army.

A Soviet spy is tasked with disrupting the negotiations between Karl Wolff and Allen Dulles taking place in Switzerland, aimed at forging a separate peace between Germany and the Western Allies.

Based on the 1959 WWII comedy of the same name; during the Second World War, a Navy officer commands a pink sub with a crew of five rescued Army nurses and a combat-phobic supply officer.

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

Ike, also known as Ike: The War Years, is a 1979 television miniseries about the life of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The screenplay by Melville Shavelson is based on Kay Summersby's 1948 memoir Eisenhower Was My Boss and her 1975 autobiography, Past Forgetting: My Love Affair. The series aired from May 3–6, 1979 on ABC. During World War II, General Dwight D. 'Ike' Eisenhower serves as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Western Europe. On a personal level, he has an extramarital affair with his driver Kay Summersby.

The Watergate crisis as viewed by John Dean and his wife Maureen, based on their personal accounts -- his best-seller, her book on how it affected their marriage -- and distilled into an eight-hour drama with all of the political figures of the day parading by as Dean relates his story to his attorney when his world, based on blind ambition, begins crashing down on him.

The lives of the men and families of G Company, 24th Infantry Division, United States Army, on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

An epic, multi-threaded story about the fate of Poles during World War II. "Czas pogardy" was shown primarily from the perspective of two main characters - Lieutenant Władysław Niwiński and Leon Kuraś - a petty crook, but not without heroic traits. The authors of the series sought to show, in particular, everyday life under Nazi occupation in Poland.

A Family at War is a British drama series created by John Finch and produced by Granada Television for ITV. It broadcast from 14 April 1970 to 16 February 1972. 52 episodes were made, all but eight in colour. Episodes numbers 25 to 32 were recorded in black and white because of the ITV Colour Strike (November 1970 — February 1971). The Ashton family struggles to deal with the harsh realities of the Second World War as their sons are sent away to fight. Those who remain at home in Liverpool live in constant fear of a knock on the door with a telegram from the War Office or the Luftwaffe bombs overhead as they sleep at night.

A structure-free, four-part examination of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Each part explores a different topic, from Hitler's cult of personality in propaganda to how said propaganda was associated with pre-Nazi German cultural, spiritual, and national heritage to the Holocaust and the ideology behind it, particularly from Himmler's point of view.

In a France fractured by court rivalries and personal ambitions, Richelieu moves without ornament. No flourish, no glory — only the cold machinery of power. Caught between a hesitant king, a nobility dreaming of defiance, and enemies multiplying on every front, the cardinal enforces his line: centralize, control, crush resistance. The series follows a strategist who doesn’t hide behind morality. He acts to keep the State standing, even if it means breaking those who stand in his way. Espionage, secret negotiations, decisive strikes… Richelieu plays a game where mistakes are fatal, and the survival of the kingdom rests on one man willing to go further than all the others

Lincoln (aka Sandburg's Lincoln) is an American six-part miniseries broadcast on NBC from September 6, 1974 to April 14, 1976.

Thundercloud is a 1979 British television comedy created and written by Ian Mackintosh. Produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, it was significantly more lighthearted than Mackintosh's prior series Warship and The Sandbaggers. Lieutenant Commander ‘Monty’ Morgan – a stickler for forms – and his shipmates operate aboard the shore-based HMS Thundercloud, a secret Royal Navy station on the Yorkshire coast during World War II, apparently far enough away from HQ to merit a remarkable degree of autonomy. In fact, the Admiralty were convinced that the station was actually a destroyer in the North Sea!

It is the start of the 14th century and Philip IV the Fair reigns supreme over France. His three sons would rule after him. Isabelle, his only daughter, is married to King Edward II of England. Under Philip's reign, France is great but its people are unhappy. Only one power dares to stand up to him: the order of the Knights Templar. When the last Grand Master of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, is burned at the stake, he curses Philip and so begins a dark period, full of blood and violence, death and tears ...

The trials and tribulations of a daring group of young pilots in the Royal Flying Corps as they prepare for battle in World War I. The lead character joins the RFC without being the right class for some of his fellow pilots.

"The Written Off" is a famous Serbian TV miniseries, that was very popular in former Yugoslavia, originally airing in 1974. Due to its popularity, Radio Television of Serbia has shown reruns of the series ten times, the last re-run starting in 2012. The series has achieved something of a cult status among its audience and still attracts an estimated 3 million viewers with its last rerun. Idea of series derives from exploits of freedom fighters in Belgrade during World War II, and all the characters and events are fictitious.

Hays Stowe is a new senator who comes to Washington DC with his wife Erin and daughter Norma. He arrives full of optimism that being on the side of justice can help him change things for the better… The characters originally appeared in the 2 hour TV-movie/pilot film A Clear and Present Danger (1970).

During World War One, in a small rural French village far away from the front, a gamekeeper and his wife take in children displaced by the war.

The series Mazarin (1978) recounts the rise of Jules Mazarin, first an Italian diplomat and later France’s chief minister after Richelieu. The story shows how he earns the trust of Anne of Austria and becomes the political mentor of the young Louis XIV. Over the course of the episodes, Mazarin faces court intrigues, the hostility of powerful nobles, and the turmoil of the Fronde, which threatens royal authority and forces him into several periods of exile. Despite pamphlets and conspiracies, he manages to restore order and prepare the emergence of the future Sun King. The series thus portrays a skilled statesman, often contested but essential in shaping absolute monarchy.

A star-laden adaptation of Anton Myrer's sprawling 1978 novel tracing the lives of five Harvard roommates of the class of '44, following them through the next 30 years. At the center of the story is a green 1939 Packard convertible and Chris Farris, a beautiful Radcliffe girl.

A Horseman Riding By is a 13-part BBC television serial produced by Ken Riddington, and adapted by Arden Winch, Alexander Baron, and John Wiles from R.F. Delderfield's 1966-68 historical novel series of the same name. Having been invalided out of the Boer War, Paul Craddock buys Shallowford, a manor house and estate in Devon, with money from his late father's scrapyard business. He soon becomes a much-respected 'Squire' determined to treat all his tenant farmers fairly, unlike his predecessor.

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The series follows a group of Allied pilots who crashed in occupied territories during WWII. A network of civilians and Resistance fighters, "La Filière", is in charge of helping them pass from France to Spain so they can avoid capture.