My Boy Jack was a British ITV production that made its way to American TV via PBS’s Masterpiece Theater. Daniel Radcliffe plays the part of Rudyard Kipling’s son Jack. The cast is impressive and it is interesting to see Harry Potter looking a bit like Hitler wearing a uniform and a mustache.
World War I was a gruesome and bloody war in which the British battle plans involved marching as many soldiers as they could into German machine gun fire. Rudyard Kipling is so keen on this course of action that he is bound and determined to put his own son among the cannon fodder for King and Country.
My Boy Jack is a very good show, filled with sorrow and drama and what it means to be an Empire. Having never seen a war worth fighting myself, it is hard imagine this burning desire to go forth and give battle to the enemy. World War I and World War II had some real enemies, and the world would not be what it is if those wars had been lost. My Boy Jack explores what this blind patriotism means to the Kipling family.
It is simply baffling that these young men were being marched off to certain death and that they chose to go anyway. If you chose not to go, you were nothing but a coward and not worth talking to. If there were war protesters they would likely have been stoned. Between the War and the Spanish Flu, it’s really surprising that there were any people left to fight in World War II.
My Boy Jack is a good movie.
