The Valour and the Horror consists of three separate two-hour segments, which aired on consecutive Sunday evenings in 1992. In the first, "Savage Christmas Hong Kong 1941," the McKennas explore the ill­ preparedness of the Canadian troops stationed in Hong Kong, the loss of the city to the Japanese, and the barbarous treatment of Canadian troops interned in slave­ labor camps for the duration of the war. Arguably the most moving of the three episodes, "Savage Christmas" was the least controversial. The eyewitness testimony of two surviving veterans, combined with archival photographs and reenactments of letters written by prisoners of war, testifies to the strength of emotion that can be generated by television documentaries.

     The second episode, "Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command," proved to be the most controversial of the three episodes. It details the blanket bombing of German cities carried out by Canadian Lancaster bombers, including the firestorm caused by the bombings of Dresden and Munich. The McKennas claim that the blanket bombing, which caused enormous casualties among both German civilians and Canadian air crews, did nothing to hasten the end of the war and was merely an act of great brutality with little military significance. In particular, British commander Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris is cited for his bloodthirstiness.

     "In Desperate Battle: Normandy 1944," the third episode. deals primarily with the massive loss of Canadian troops at Verrieres Ridge during the assault on Normandy, citing the incompetence and inexperience of Canadian military leadership as the cause for the high casualty rate. This episode also accuses the Canadian forces of war crimes against German soldiers­ war crimes that were never prosecuted after the war.

     All three episodes combine black-and-white archival footage of the war with present-day interviews with both allied and enemy veterans and civilians. Each episode has a voice-over narration by Brian McKenna and is accompanied by music taken from Gabriel Faure's Requiem of 1893. The sections taken from the Requiem are those sung primarily by young boys. The accompaniment was perhaps chosen because, throughout each episode, the McKennas emphasize the youth of the combatants and the terrible but preventable waste of both Canada's young  men and innocent German civilians, including babies ripped from their mothers' arms by the wind during the firestorms that followed the bombing.

     The youthfulness of  the soldiers  is also emphasized in some very controversial reenactments in which  actors speak lines taken from the letters and diaries of Canadian and British military  personnel.  Although these reenactments are well marked as such, veterans have claimed that they are misleading and extremely selective about what  they  include.  Reenactments, which are more characteristic of "reality" TV  programs such as  America's  Most  Wanted  and Rescue 911, are problematic in conventional documentary practice. As Bill Nichols argues in Representing Reality, "documentaries run some risks of credibility in recreating an event: the special indexical bond  between image and historical event is ruptured." Certainly, reenactments are more  conventional  in television than in cinematic documentaries.

     The battle that ensued over The Valour and the Horror was a battle over the interpretation of history and the responsibilities of publicly funded television. The McKennas have argued that, in the tradition of investigative journalism, they wished to set aside the official account of the war and examine events from the point of view of the participants. They have also argued that the real story has never been told and that their own research has shown gross incompetence, mismanagement, and cover-ups on the part of the Canadian government. Historians and veterans have argued that The Valour and the Horror is a revisionist history that is both historically inaccurate and poorly researched.

     The  major  complaints  against  The  Valour  and theHorror by historians are its lack of context, poor research, and bias that led to misinterpretation and inaccuracy. The McKennas, in defending themselves, have to a degree been their own worst enemies. By claiming that their series is fact, and contains no fiction, and also by claiming that their research is "bullet proof," they have set themselves up for all kinds of attacks-attacks that have also affected the status of publicly funded television  in Canada.  Publicly funded institutions are particularly vulnerable to attacks by powerful lobbies, whose animosity can and does jeopardize the institutions· financial stability. The Valour and the Horror can be seen as a particularly acrimonious chapter in the continuing battle between a publicly funded institution and the taxpayers who support it. In this, it is not unlike the battle waged in the United States between veterans and the Smithsonian Institute over the representation of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.