Netflix’s 'Churchill’s Secret Agents' is a ripping World War II yarn

Every bone in my body aches, I nearly drowned, I crawled under barbed wire, I had three migraines, and you know what? It’s been one of the best experiences of my life. I’ve absolutely loved it.
--Paul Stone, entertainer

Netflix’s five-part documentary series, Churchill’s Secret Agents, was originally presented by the BBC in 2017 as Secret Agent Selection: WW2. Its creation was inspired by the declassification of the training techniques of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) a force of specially trained agents to work abroad with resistance groups created by Winston Churchill, in the dark days of 1940.

Drawing from both the civilian population and the military, by the end of the war, 9,000 agents were trained and sent into the field - many of whom did not return - whose work shortened the war by six months. It was a daring and unorthodox move - Churchill described the SOE as “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” and its techniques were based on those used by the Irish Republican Army.

The program trained recruits to be assassins and saboteurs, and the decent chaps in the Royal Air Force initially thought dropping agents behind enemy lines was unethical. The Royal Navy had its scruples too, and although the problem of getting agents to occupied Europe was not resolved until the next year, training began.

The series brilliantly uses contemporary footage as commentary and clarification of the simulated experiences, seamlessly narrated by a familiar voice, that of Douglas Henshall (Jimmy Perez in Shetland).