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Review: There are three good reasons to watch Blitz, currently streaming on Apple Plus.
First is the presence of the great Saoirse Ronan - adding a London East End accent to her already impressive alternatives to her native Irish.
Second is the brilliant writer-director, Steve McQueen, who brings a rigourous artist's eye to everything he does.
And third is that Blitz offers a brand-new view of one of the great war-movie clichés.
I have fond memories of Harold, the "son" of TV's Steptoe and Son saying "I'm sick of being a chirpy Cockney - cup of tea in one hand, thumbs up to the camera with the other. 'Britain can take it, mate!' Why can't I be miserable like everyone else?"
And McQueen decided that, while his Blitz wouldn't be endlessly miserable, he was going to show a selection of Blitz events you've never seen before.
Including the star - first-timer, Elliott Heffernan, who plays 11-year-old George, about to be evacuated to the countryside by his mum Rita.
Apparently McQueen had seen a 1940 photo of a mixed-race London kid clutching a too-big suitcase, and wondered "Who's he? I've never seen anyone like him before. What's his story?"
This is what Blitz sets out to tell.
It's also about solo mum Rita - has Ronan ever played a mother before? Not sure. She's a lively East Ender with a colourful past and a determination to protect her son George.
Every day now the neighbourhood is being bombed by Hitler's Luftwaffe. It's decided George has got to get out.
In this she's supported by her equally colourful dad - this is definitely the first Granddad role played by old punk, the Jam's Paul Weller.
He's terrific, and there's no question that he, Ronan and Heffernan make a truly convincing 1940s East Ender family.
Against his will, George is unceremoniously dumped on a train travelling West. And Rita has to return to her full-time job in a factory, making munitions for the lads in Europe.
She's also been selected to sing for BBC's Worker's Playtime. Live with a brass band, no less.
But George has no intention of leaving home - even if he does make friends with some other white evacuee kids. East End kids are fearless.
Incidentally, the treatment of racism in wartime Britain is beautifully handled, as you'd expect, by McQueen.
Many of the events in Blitz are based on documented truth - like Nigerian Home Guard Ife, keeping the peace in an underground station. I'd never seen him before, nor the little person Mickey Davies, who ran a shelter in Stepney and went on to help found the NHS.
Or the posh nightclub, dancing while bombs rained around the West End.
When George jumps off the moving train he has one thing in mind - to get home. And along the way he meets a wide variety of people - good and bad - but mostly doing the best they can.
It couldn't be more Dickensian if it tried!
Blitz is hugely entertaining - Dickensian comedy and Shakespearean drama with a Cockney accent, blending into the most engrossing of history lessons.
Ronan pulls off another great performance - her second this year after The Outrun. What does a girl have to do to get an Oscar, you wonder?
But good as the performances are - young Elliott Heffernan is as engaging as he is natural - it's all in the service of one of today's great film-makers.
McQueen's films are like no-one else's, more art-works to explore in your own time than routine three-act melodramas.
I'm grateful that Apple Plus commissioned it, of course, but I'd have loved to have seen it in a big, old-fashioned 1940s cinema.
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