This series has an admirable goal! They want to capture the horrendous suffering of the world's armies in the trenches of France and Belgium during 1914 to 1918. The problem should be obvious. It cannot be done. If it depicts this slaughter accurately, it would repulse most viewers. The carnage cannot be imparted to viewers without, well....depicting carnage. To make this suffering more personal, they bring in a soldier from UK (Thomas) and one from Deutschland (Michael), and switch back and forth between armies. Since the German Michael speaks with a British accent, it's confusing. Then they add in the obvious pandering to today's sexually active crowd, and have the usual humpty-bumpty during lulls in the carnage, so that a Polish nurse (helping the Brits) gets pregnant. I'm not sure why she is Polish rather than French or Belgian, but I assumed it had something to do with the lower moral standards of Poles. So, Thomas becomes a proud father amid cheers from his mates, and has a reason to live. The German Michael had already convinced his girlfriend to lower her knickers as a farewell gift, presumably so he won't have to die never having "known" a woman- in the Biblical sense. As you would expect, Thomas and Michael meet face to face on the battlefield, and because they've been depicted as equals, they receive equal treatment there as well. The series wants to depict the carnage as a war where we can be sympathetic to all sides. It doesn't work.
Review of The Passing Bells
