One of the first statements in the narration is this. "Will Eisenhower and Churchill's controversial decisions keep Patton from achieving his goal?" Already, the "suits" back in their command posts are the dilatory obstacles preventing the hero Patton from winning the war.
You know, really, Patton is an iconic figure and his achievements are legendary. A portion of the American public has practically canonized him. That makes it difficult to present anything like a balanced picture of the man without evoking the wrath of his more ardent admirers. I'll take the chance because, as a sort of scientist, I can't help believing that judgments should be based on facts rather than the prevailing meme.
I'm afraid I'm put off a bit by the narration as well. I don't care that the narrator mispronounces words like "Argentan" and "von Kluge." But it all sounds too tabloidish. As the Germans were being slaughtered during the retreat from Falaise, a bumptious voice crows that "the P-47s are armed to the teeth and about to feast on the exposed army." The talking heads, the ones who were actually there, are far less arrogant. When one German made a daring attempt to escape, they rooted for him to succeed.
The narration takes sides with Patton consistently. In his race to close the Falaise gap, "nothing could stop him, except General Omar Bradley, his former subordinate." The reason given for Bradley's order to halt was "Bradley got cold feet." That's ludicrous. The order to halt was given because of the very real prospect that the Brits and Canadians on the north and the Americans on the south would have been firing on one another while trying to squeeze off the escape route that was being systematically raked by air and artillery. It's a dangerous maneuver that (I think) is called "passing the ranks."
I've been a bit hard on the program so far, justifiably, I think, but it has its virtues too. The Wehrmacht is given its due credit. The CGIs are useful and judiciously used. The reenactments are convincing. And the newsreel and combat footage is used appropriately. Alas, someone has decided that the editing should follow the example of a thirty-second soft drink commercial, full of whizzes and bangs, the images blinking in split second intervals from negative to positive. The zooms and yoyos are distracting. But it's good to see some attention paid to the light aircraft that served as spotters. The outline of Patton's progress across France, including the time line, is kept clear enough.
Some of the acts of Patton's men were "heroic", no matter how the word is defined. They're almost incredible. One guy runs out into the middle of a field under fire and stands there as an aiming point for the tanks. Another, facing a blown bridge, swims across the entire Seine River under fire, ties a handful of rowboats together, and tows them back across the Seine. The former won the CMH, the latter the DSC.
What Patton has stage so far resembled the Blitzkrieg of 1939. Tanks followed by infantry rushing across the countryside, in a milieu in which the Allies had almost complete air superiority and the land forces could have obstacles swept aside by ground attack. Then, as with Hitler's Blitzkrieg and Rommel's dash across Africa, the inevitable happened and the tanks outran their fuel supply and chugged to a halt. Patton was outraged that some of the fuel had been diverted to his rival, Montgomery, but the men enjoyed the respite.
The program ends with Patton at the Meuse, so it doesn't cover his later actions, including perhaps his most prescient and extraordinary achievement.