Blitz Street

What an unsettling experience watching Channel 4's Blitz Street is. The programme has built 'a row of terraced houses specially built on a remote military base and subjected it to a frightening range of large-scale bombs and incendiaries similar to those dropped by the Luftwaffe' (Channel 4). Experts then proceed to analyse the damage done by each bomb - the SC50, the SC500 etc. This insight into the devastation wrought by the weaponry is accompanied by 'emotional eye witness testimonies, giving a fantastic insight into day-to-day life on the home front and the immense psychological damage caused by the bombardment'. But the effect on the human beings who had to live through this shattering of masonry, glass and wood remains implicit. As is clear from the excited expert analysis of the effects of the bombs, the programme-makers have invested all their energy into the reconstruction and destruction of the buildings. The result is a rather autistic attempt to comprehend the horrors of war - despite all the noise and violence, we are left with a 'clean' analysis, untroubled by mess, but missing the point. The unspoken element, of course, is the human body. What would bring together emotional testimony and destroyed buildings is a similarly forensic dissection of the smashing of human flesh and bones. Now that would be emotional.