The Trench Detectives

At the end of the Great War, nearly two million soldiers were missing, presumed dead. Almost 90 years later, the bloody battlegrounds of France and Belgium are surrendering their secrets. A team of archaeologists, historians and forensic experts is working to identify unknown soldiers and finally lay them to rest.

The Trench Detectives is a documentary series that follows the work of this team as it moves through time and across the battlefields of France and Belgium, releasing the fallen and their stories of courage and sacrifice from the mud of the First World War battles in which they fought and died. Each episode focuses on an archaeological dig at the site of a single significant battle of the Great War. Objects and evidence found there are traced back, through painstaking detective work, to a soldier or soldiers whose personal story can then be told.