{"id":24856,"date":"2025-07-26T10:12:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24856\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T10:12:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:12:13","slug":"the-10-best-prisoner-of-war-dramas-from-stalag-17-to-colditz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24856\/","title":{"rendered":"The 10 best prisoner-of-war dramas, from Stalag 17 to Colditz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a prisoner of war is a fate no one could wish for and films and TV dramas won\u2019t let us forget that. Whether in the bleak chilliness of central Europe or the steaming jungles of Burma, the plight of the PoW on-screen is one of torture and sadism at the hands of their military captors. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, showing on BBC1\/iPlayer and based on Richard Flanagan\u2019s searing novel, is just the latest example.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s often light in the dark \u2014 gallows humour and no shortage of British pluck \u2014 as this list below shows.<\/p>\n

\"Still10. Escape to Victory (1981)<\/p>\n

It still sounds absurd: Sylvester Stallone in goal, Michael Caine at left back, Bobby Moore at centre half, Pele up front, all taking on a Nazi team. But come on, this bank holiday matinee favourite is highly enjoyable. The plot isn\u2019t so far-fetched either, being inspired by a real story: the \u201cdeath match\u201d between the Ukrainian team and a Nazi German side in 1942 in occupied Kyiv. The Ukrainians won 5-3. Rent<\/p>\n

\"Tenko9. Tenko (1981-84) <\/p>\n

The travails of the malnourished women internees as they were roasted in an Asian internment camp after the fall of Singapore in 1942 were popular in the 1980s (about 15 million viewers). It wasn\u2019t so much the sight of boils, scorpion bites and torturous labour that kept us glued to it, more the intimate interplay between the women. U <\/p>\n

\"Still<\/p>\n

Robert Wagner and David McCallum in Colditz<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

8. Colditz (1972-74)<\/p>\n

The 1955 film The Colditz Story was the fourth most popular at the British box office that year. Yet it was in the early 1970s that escape from Colditz-mania really took off thanks to the TV series starring David McCallum, Robert Wagner and Edward Hardwicke. Most affecting is Michael Bryant as Wing Commander George Marsh, who feigns madness to get repatriated. It works, except it leads to a genuine psychosis and he is committed to a mental hospital. DVD<\/p>\n

7. Empire of the Sun (1987)<\/p>\n

Christian Bale was impressive on screen even at the age of 13. In Steven Spielberg\u2019s take on JG Ballard\u2019s semi-fictional memoir \u2014 about his boyhood internment during the Japanese invasion of China \u2014 some of the best moments come when Bale\u2019s expat finds himself bonding with John Malkovich\u2019s brash American Basie in the camp (and look out for a young Ben Stiller). It\u2019s worth revisiting. Bale would later turn PoW again in Werner Herzog\u2019s 2006 jungle-survival film Rescue Dawn, also pretty good. Rent<\/p>\n

\"Ryuichi<\/p>\n

Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Bowie in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence<\/p>\n

REX FEATURES<\/p>\n

6. Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983)<\/p>\n

A cult classic more for its musical connections \u2014 a blond David Bowie on the poster and Ryuichi Sakamoto\u2019s celebrated synth soundtrack. Yet there\u2019s still much curiosity in a tale of Bowie\u2019s eccentric English free spirit defying the strict, code-bound cruelties of Captain Yonoi (Sakamoto). An oddity, but Akira Kurosawa and Christopher Nolan put this among their favourite films, so who am I to argue? Rent<\/p>\n

5. The Deer Hunter (1978)<\/p>\n

Michael Cimino\u2019s portrait of a Pennsylvania community wrecked by a war far away slowly builds a sense of dread before exploding into its famed central sequence in Vietnam. No matter how many times you see it, when Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage\u2019s characters \u2014 taken captive by the Viet Cong \u2014 are forced to play Russian roulette, your heart is in your mouth. StudioCanal<\/p>\n

\"Scene<\/p>\n

Comedy leavens the suffering in Stalag 17<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

4. Stalag 17 (1953)<\/p>\n

The original Second World War PoW film set the template for others, but it still has a feel of its own. The director Billy Wilder\u2019s sharp eye for comedy means there\u2019s a knockabout fun to the scenes inside Barrack Four as the American prisoners try to keep up morale \u2014 \u201cI\u2019ll get you a date with Betty Grable!\u201d Even the camp commandant is played by Otto Preminger as a twinkly-eyed buffoon. There is grit undercutting the humour, of course. Rent<\/p>\n

3. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)<\/p>\n

Long before The Narrow Road to the Deep North depicted Burma\u2019s Death Railway we had Alec Guinness\u2019s stiff-upper-lipped English colonel leading a battalion of British PoWs as they toil away at a bridge. His stubborn national pride in the face of gruelling sadism means the Brits build a better bridge than their captors could. The face-offs between Guinness\u2019s Colonel Nicholson and his nemesis Colonel Saito, played by Sessue Hayakawa, are what endure. Sky\/Now<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

Pierre Fresnay and Jean Gabin in La Grande Illusion<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

2. La Grande Illusion (1937)<\/p>\n

Jean Renoir\u2019s classic is like a Great Escape from a more civilised age. Erich von Stroheim is unforgettable as the stiff-backed German aristocrat who treats his imprisoned French counterpart Captain De Boieldieu with gentlemanly respect. There\u2019s a great clip on YouTube of Orson Welles telling Dick Cavett that this film would be on his ark if he could save only two. The other? \u201cSomething else,\u201d he says. DVD<\/p>\n

\"Steve<\/p>\n

Steve McQueen in The Great Escape<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

1. The Great Escape (1963)<\/p>\n

How true to life was the most loved PoW epic of all? Apparently by March 1944, when 76 men tunnelled out, the German guards knew the war was nearly over and were happy to be bribed with cigarettes. And in the tunnels the men\u2019s poor diet meant that their bowels were so loose they often had to go to the loo right there and then, which I don\u2019t recall happening to Charles Bronson. No matter, Steve McQueen on a motorbike is immortal and that theme tune became the whistled soundtrack to every great escape since. Sky\/Now<\/p>\n

Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a>, the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to what to watch this week<\/a>, and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Being a prisoner of war is a fate no one could wish for and films and TV dramas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-24856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}