World War One in colour - Channel 5

Marvellous. Channel 5 (or someone at least) has taken a whole bunch of First World War footage and colourized it and put it out at 9pm on a Wednesday. Marvellous.

And not just that. Somehow they've assembled a whole bunch of veterans (I didn't think there were any left), several of whom have died since being interviewed, to tell us what they remember. And there's a whole bunch of talking heads, including the incomparable Norman Stone, to give us the bigger picture. And they've got Kenneth Branagh to do the voiceover. Michael Redgrave did it for the Great War in the 1960s, Laurence Olivier did it for the World at War in the 1970s and now we have Kenneth Branagh. Forget the Dane, the real mark of a great actor is doing a World War narration.

But the centrepiece of the show is the coloured footage. Sky is blue, grass is green, skin is pink, uniforms are khaki, blue and grey and mud is brown. For some reason the effect is to make the whole event more immediate, more real. Good.