Just after World War I, Captain Fred Roberts (Ben Chaplin) goes for a job as a newspaper journalist and tells the sub-editor how, in the trenches in 1916, he discovered a printing press in working order. Helped by ex-printer Sergeant Harris (Steve Oram) and with his friend Jack Pearson (Julian Rhind-Tutt) as his assistant, he sets up the Wipers Times--the name coming from the soldiers' pronunciation of the town Ypres. Despite disapproval from officious Lieutenant Colonel Howfield (Ben Daniels),but with backing from sympathetic General Mitford (Sir Michael Palin),they produce 23 issues of a satirical magazine (its articles represented on-screen in black-and-white) which boosts morale and even gets mentioned in the Tatler. The press is destroyed by a German shell, but another is found and the paper's title changed to fit in with wherever the regiment is deployed. Pearson and Roberts are awarded gallantry medals, but when the sub-editor offers Roberts only the job of crossword compiler, Roberts moves to Canada as a prospector, while Pearson marries and opens a hotel in Argentina. Both survived into the 1960s.
The Wipers Times
Based on the remarkable true story of a satirical newspaper published on the front lines of World War One, this poignant yet comedic drama revels in the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.
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