Dan Snow reviews the evolution of warfare over the course of 250 years as depicted in historical movies.

Spanning from the late-18th to early-21st Century, Dan charts the development of battle tactics and strategy, as well as the rapid evolution of weapons technology which have transformed the battlefield.

In the first episode, starting of with The Patriot (2000), Dan comments on the use of columns of infantry advancing slowly toward the enemy musket volleys in the American War of Independence from 1775 to 1783 - a battlefield strategy that seems almost archaic to us now. He also details the early forms of guerilla warfare seen in the American Revolutionary War, that were used to chip away at British morale.

Moving on over half a century later in Glory (1989) - a film starring Denzel Washington, Matthew Broderick and Samuel L. Jackson depicting the horrors of the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865 - Dan notes how battlefield strategy, such as that seen at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, had barely changed from that seen several decades earlier during the American Revolution. That being said, with new rifles and artillery that were far more deadly than the muskets and cannons used in the late 1700s, the casualties of the American Civil War were far greater.

Lastly, Dan reviews the classic film Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which depicts the lesser known Middle Eastern frontier during the First World War from 1914 to 1918. Whilst men were chewing barbed wire in Europe and marching toward the enemy in columns over no man's land (not to dissimilar to the American Civil War) to take enemy trenches, a more mobile kind of warfare was taking place in the deserts of Syria and Jordan. Dan analyses the famous attack on Aqaba, an Ottoman stronghold that succumbed to the genius of Sherif Nasir, Auda abu Tayi and T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") who chose to attack on horseback from the desert as opposed to carrying out a beachhead assault.