''Days of Honour'' () is a Polish

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

television drama series In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular su ...

, broadcast on

TVP2 TVP2 (TVP Dwa, ''Telewizja Polska 2'', ''Program Drugi Telewizji Polskiej'', ''"Dwójka"'') is a Polish public mainstream TV channel operated by TVP. Launched in October 1970, its varied line-up contains a variety of programming (documentary, h ...

from 7 September 2008 to 23 November 2014, on STV Glasgow from 2 June 2014 and

STV Edinburgh STV Edinburgh was a British local television channel based in Edinburgh which launched on 12 January 2015. It was owned and operated by STV Group plc in partnership with Edinburgh Napier University. The channel was closed on Sunday 23 April 20 ...

from 16 January 2015.

Plot

Set in German-occupied Poland 1939-1944 (series I, II, III, IV and VII) and in post-war Poland 1945-1946 (series V and VI), the series tells a story of Union of Armed Struggle/

Armia Krajowa The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...

/ Armed Forces Delegation for Poland soldiers commonly referred to as '' cichociemni''. The script was inspired by the stories of Polish soldiers who during

underwent training in the UK in order to return to German-occupied Poland and partake in the underground struggle for independence. The series also touches upon the challenges faced by the German

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis List of intelligence gathering disciplines, approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist Commanding officer, commanders in decision making pr ...

organisation

Abwehr The (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...

, the intelligence agency of the SS Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (SD), the Nazi

secret police image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png, 300px, Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989. Both organizations used similar forms of repression. Secre ...

commonly known as the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

and the infiltration of the Union of Armed Struggle/Armia Krajowa by the Abwehr and the SD. The series also briefly covers the activities of the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (

GRU Gru is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the ''Despicable Me'' film series. Gru or GRU may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Gru (rapper), Serbian rapper * Gru, an antagonist in '' The Kine Saga'' Organizations Georgia (c ...

) and the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

. Until 2013 six series of 13 episodes each were made. Series I, II and III take place in the spring, summer and autumn of 1941. Series IV covers the period from April to June 1944. The action takes place mainly in Warsaw, including the Warsaw Ghetto, however some parts of the series are set in other areas of the

General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...

, as well as England, Italy and the Third Reich. Series V tells the story of the final period of World War II and shortly after its end, from April to June 1945, and is set in the newly instated

People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

and the American zone of the Allied-occupied

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. The action of series I to VI unfolds in the chronological order. Series VII, however, takes it back to 1944 and shows the events of the

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...

, the 70th anniversary of which were celebrated in 2014.

Cast

* Jan Wieczorkowski as Władek Konarski * Antoni Pawlicki as Janek Markiewicz *

Maciej Zakościelny Maciej Gracjan Zakościelny (born 7 May 1980, in Stalowa Wola) is a Polish film, television and theatre actor. Life and career He was born on 7 May 1980 in Stalowa Wola. In 2004, he began his studies at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in ...

as Bronek Wojciechowski * Jakub Wesołowski as Michał Konarski * Krystian Wieczorek as Martin Halbe (series 1 to 3) *

Piotr Adamczyk Piotr Aleksander Adamczyk (; born March 21, 1972) is a Polish film, television, voice and theatre actor. He is known for portraying pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin in the biographical film '' Chopin: Desire for Love'' (2002), Pope John Paul ...

as Lars Rainer (from series 2) * Katarzyna Gniewkowska as Maria Konarska * Jan Englert as Czesław Konarski (series 1) * Robert Gonera as Aleksey Dykov (series 4) * Maja Ostaszewska (series 1) and Magdalena Różczka (from series 2) as Wanda Ryszkowska * Agnieszka Więdłocha as Lena Sajkowska * Piotr Żurawski as Romek Sajkowski * Krzysztof Globisz as Leon Sajkowski (series 1 to 3) * Anna Romantowska as Sabina Sajkowska (series 1 to 3) * Ewa Wencel as Helena * Karolina Gorczyca as Wiktoria "Ruda" Rudnicka

Episodes

Series 1 Episode 1 Spring 1941. A small division of Polish soldiers are completing their training in England and are about to be parachuted back to occupied Poland in order to carry out sabotage actions against the Germans. The members of the division are: Czesław Konarski, major of the Polish Armed Forces; his two sons - Władek, sportsman and lieutenant of the Polish Armed Forces, and Michał, medical student; Jan Markiewicz, an architecture graduate from Praga in Warsaw, and Bronek Woyciechowski - before the war the only heir to the fortune of a Warsaw businessman. In the meantime the Gestapo are setting a trap...

Production

Reception

The series broadcast by

Telewizja Polska Telewizja Polska S.A. (; TVP), also known in English as Polish Television, is a Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster in Poland, founded in 1952. It is the oldest and largest Polish television network. After 2015, when the right-wing po ...

enjoyed huge popularity in Poland and the licence to screen it has been purchased by broadcasters in Italy, China,Polish WWII Drama Series Bought by Italian and Chinese TV
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and

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

References

External links

The series available to watch online for free at VOD.pl (in Polish)

TVP Distribution - "Days of Honor"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160913104700/http://dystrybucja.tvp.pl/en/katalog/fabula/serial/do-60/czas-honoru , date=2016-09-13
Questions of honour
''The Economist'', Nov 18th 2010 2008 Polish television series debuts Polish drama television series World War II television drama series Television shows set in Poland Television series set in the 1930s Military television series 2014 Polish television series endings Telewizja Polska original programming Works about the Warsaw Uprising