D-Day: The Unheard Tapes

“Not for a second have I ever been resentful about paying the BBC licence fee, but I’ve hardly ever been as happy to do so as when watching D-Day: The Unheard Tapes. It’s one of the best pieces of public service broadcasting I’ve seen in years.”
Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian

“Just like the glorious dead, these stories never grow old. But, as we saw, new life can be breathed into them by the increasingly used documentary method of actor lip-syncing. I am not always a fan, sometimes finding it distracting and a little ‘AI’ as you look for mouths and words not matching. Yet it was used to great effect in Aids: The Unheard Tapes in 2022 and here it probably worked even better. It did not distract; it added, bringing disembodied voices to life in 3D. The actors’ timing was mostly perfect.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The immediacy is jolting, the emotional access intimate. There is a difference between listening to the crackly recording of an old soldier talking about being shot at by Germans, and watching that same recollection issue from the mouth of a fresh-faced man in his twenties wearing period civvies and a raffish ’tache.”
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph

“It’s a technique we’ve seen before but never better than it is done here. The cast are chosen for their resemblance to the real soldiers, as well as their uncanny ability to mouth their lines in perfect synchronisation with the tapes. Their demob suits, haircuts and moustaches are all convincingly 1940s, as are the backdrops – a pub table, a front room, a spartan office. Even their faces were hollow-cheeked, with the gaunt look of men under rationing.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail