World War II drama "World on Fire" returns with more terrifying and rage-inducing untold stories

From the outset, "World on Fire" defied the typical expectations for a World War II period drama when it premiered in March 2020. In the series, Douglas (Sean Bean) and Nancy (Helen Hunt) were survivors of previous wars with varying levels of PTSD. The ensemble cast was similarly not made up of the white heterosexual masculine viewpoints of the Allied soldiers found in the typical "Band of Brothers" awards bait, and when the show did consider male perspectives, it always came with a twist. However, like many BBC productions, it still came with a major blind spot: all these stories were from a white perspective.

It's been over three years since that season aired, making "World on Fire" one of the last series renewed pre-pandemic to return to the small screen. In that time, the show lost key cast members to other projects, including Bean and Hunt, along with Brian J Smith, who played Nancy's gay nephew Dr. Webster, and Arthur Darvill, introduced at the end of Season 1 as a wealthy upper-class daredevil pilot. Meanwhile, Ewan Mitchell – who played Douglas' son Tom, who only joined the Navy as a means to escape prison – had his role substantially reduced to fit around his arduous dragon-riding, cousin-beheading schedule over on "House of the Dragon." But instead of giving up, the series has used these losses — nearly all of whom are notably the closest to the traditional white men on the side of the Allies — to its advantage by course-correcting its previously limiting point of view. 

Not completely, of course. Jonah Hauer-King ("Little Women," "The Little Mermaid," still graces the marketing posters as Harry Chase, who is the "traditional white male war hero" trope turned on its ear. In Season 1, he was an incompetent, unlikable mess whose every life choice only made everything worse. Season 2 puts his follies all under one roof, opening with his arrival home to his mother, snobbish wealthy widow Robina (Lesley Manville), still annoyed we haven't just appeased Hitler already. Also present is Lois (Julia Brown), the mother of his child and Douglas' daughter, who spent Season 1 determined to have a singing career, her pregnancy or the war be damned. This time, he's got his wife in tow, Polish female resistance fighter Kasia (Zofia Wichlacz), who spent Season 1 seducing and murdering Nazis. 

Zofia Wichłacz as Kasia in "World on Fire" (Mammoth Screen/Masterpiece)Harry, naturally, exits as soon as he reasonably can, leaving the three to cope. However, this is where the absence of Bean, Darvill and Mitchell is put to good use, giving more screentime to Kasia, who sometimes felt like she was added in at the very end of episodes, ready to take down another Nazi merely to remind the audience her storyline existed. Now, she's the wartime survivor of sexual assault, suffering from PTSD during an era when it has no name. Her struggle to figure out where she fits, having identified as a soldier for so long, is one of the season's more powerful narratives, moreso because, unlike so many stories of those who come home from war and must reintegrate, this is a soldier who is suddenly told to become a wife and mother. She also discovers her new British neighbors are far more sympathetic to refugees as long as they are theoretical. Confronted with people who "insist on speaking foreign," as one character memorably puts it, and suddenly, they are not nearly as thrilled with your existence. While the parallels to the back-to-back crises in the U.K., first over Syrian refugees and now over those from Ukraine, may not immediately register with American audiences, they certainly should for BBC viewers.

Meanwhile, Lois, who was being set up to marry Darvill's character in Season 2, now has to contend with the loss of father and fiance, along with her singing career, stuck driving ambulances while her brother is off fighting. Season 1 gave her a backup singer BFF, Connie (Yrsa Daley-Ward), who rarely got more than sassy one-liners. Season 2 gives their relationship an actual emotional arc, with Connie struggling to get Lois to recognize how badly her self-destructive behavior is hurting those around her, not to mention scarring her impressionable daughter. 

Eugénie Derouand as Henriette in "World on Fire" (Mammoth Screen/Masterpiece)Connie's not the only supporting character given an arc with white men out of the way. Over in Paris, Season 1 focused on Dr. Webster's denial that France would ever fall, only to see the rise of the Vichy regime and his Black queer jazz musician boyfriend Albert (Parker Sawyers) taken away to the camps in the finale. Albert's journey is now via his own perspective, as he takes over the Paris storyline along with Season 1's Nurse Henriette (Eugénie Derouand), who wasn't given much to do other than be secretly Jewish. Her elevation to a main role adds another female viewpoint to the roster and the show's first explicitly Jewish one. 

However, it's Egypt introducing Indian Captain Rajib Pal (Ahad Raza Mir) that's the show's jewel in the crown. The Captain at least serves as a conduit to the first time I've seen a series about the Second World War acknowledge the colonial forces that served in the British Army by the millions, and the only time I've seen it shown from the perspective of the colonized. Not unexpectedly, this thread running through this season's six episodes is worth tuning in for alone. Season 2 is set only seven years before the end of the British Raj and Partition, and Viceroy Linlithgow's unilateral decision to declare India at war with Germany without so much as a by-your-leave, was a significant factor in India winning the fight for self-determination, even as many Hindus and Muslims supported the war. It is rich material, an army of volunteers who believe in the cause while also deeply angry with those they fight for.

Ahad Raza Mir as Rajib in "World on Fire" (Mammoth Screen/Masterpiece)

"World on Fire" also continues to bring a rare perspective from inside Germany as well. Season 1 gave Hunt's character Nancy a mystery to solve, uncovering the Aktion T4 Operation, which was the Nazi biological genocidal "health" programs that amounted to the mass extermination of the mentally disabled. Season  2 moves focus to a completely new set of characters centered by schoolgirl Marga (Miriam Schiweck), being recruited for the Lebensborn program, which privately offered underaged girls deemed "racially pure" to SS officers to impregnate with the idea this would create a genetic "super-race." Friends and family helplessly try to stop Marga, so innocent she doesn't understand the danger, all while knowing that no one, not even the girl herself, can be trusted. These scenes are standouts, as much for the terror they hold as for the reminder of all those inside Germany whose suffering has long been swept aside.

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This sounds like it's a lot of stories, and it really is. Like Season 1, there are a few times when the coincidences that put everyone in the right place at the right time can strain credibility. But somehow, the series never feels like it's trying to do too much, even when it is obviously straining VFX budgets to the limit. In the wrong hands, the whole thing could collapse easily into melodrama or, worse, tedium. But "World on Fire's" second season also highlights how much history is only getting told now for the first time, nearly a century on. One can only hope that the BBC and PBS greenlight more seasons and continue to let the scale of its ambitions soar.   

"World on Fire" returns for Season 2 on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS' "Masterpiece."