Stuart Price picks the best of the recent Second World War documentaries

Television in the Third Reich

There have been two fascinating sideways looks at the Second World War so far this year, although the conflict has been covered in some way or another every week: in the benchmark overview, World at War on BBC2; in any number of standard trawls - C5ís current Great Battles of World War 11 being one; and in more incisive analyses, such as C4ís exemplary Hell in the Pacific and last weekís Timewatch on the Allied bombing raids.

The two series about the war this year which stand out, though, have been C4ís look at how Nazi doctors disregard medical ethics, Science and the Swastika, and BBC2ís Allies at War, a three- part documentary investigating the antagonisms between De Gualle, Churchill and Roosevelt. These brought something new to the table by going in from the side, eschewing the generalities of the larger conflict to concentrate on one explicit idea. The latest documentary in C4ís Secret History slot, Television in the Third Reich (Thurs 9pm), is another fascinating example of this. While it perhaps hasnít the depth of the previous pair, the historical value of its material is immense.

Nazi Germany put out its first regular schedule in 1935, beating the BBC by 12 months. Up to four hours a day was broadcast in the pre-war era, with Germans gathering in television parlous around Berlin to watch a channel dominated by ideologically sound light entertainment shows- cookery, health and beauty , fly-on-the wall documentaries and gardening. (Ah, plus ca change.)Unlike its counterparts in Britain and the US during the war, German television continued to broadcast up until 1944, remaking itself as an "entertainment" medium for wounded soldiers.

The importance of the footage ‚ and the documentary rightly fills a lot of time with the material ‚ is its rough edges. Television was classed as an unimportant medium, despite its propaganda value, and as a result cameramen didnít get the prime spots at events. They were more often jostling in the crowd, so giving a better sense of the view everyday Germans had of events such as the 1936 National Socialist Party Convention in Nuremburg (left) , or the visit by the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, to Berlin. And because of the cumbersome equipment much was short in long takes, which come across as immediate and unmediated, acting as intriguing antidotes to the more polished newsreels of the time or the films of Leni Riefenstahl.

While the appetite of viewers for basic war documentaries is probably already stated, there is plenty of space for new spins such as this one.