The Big Freeze: Winter '63 (2022 TV Movie) User Reviews

The UK winter my mum told me about

[djdezzie · 6/10 · 10 November 2023]

I don't remember the winter of 1963 although I was told many times about it by my parents while growing up.

I was born on the 14th December 1962, just 12 days before this event and I was told stories of Britain coming to a standstill and sad stories of babies not surviving the extreme cold. Which, obviously, made all parents with new borns very worried indeed...including mine.

Back in 1962/63 central heating was only for the rich so for the majority of people their only form of heating was a coal fire and a paraffin heater in your bedroom, if you were lucky.

Although I was told many stories regarding this event, it wasn't until I saw this for myself that I realised just how bad it was.

I never thought I would get to see and experience the winter of '63, that was until 2022 when this documentary was released.

This is a great watch if you were born in the UK around, or before, this time. It also shows that 50 years on, we have learnt nothing. As everytime it snows, Britain still grinds to a halt!

Cold as Ice

[Lejink · 6/10 · 20 February 2024]

I was only about two and a half when the U. K. experienced its coldest ever sustained winter freeze as 1962 moved into 1963, so obviously I don't remember it personally but it must have been something to experience back in the day.

Starting in December 1962, it persisted for three months, sparing no part of the country in its wake, contributing to a major train disaster, doubtless accounting for the lives of many others too, massively disrupting the British economy in the process. These were the days when there was no central heating and often no inside toilets and in time-honoured fashion, a number of sufficiently elderly lesser celebrities like Gloria Hunniford, Pete Waterman and Joanna Lumley are in hand to give us their random recollections of the times, along with weatherman John Kettley and a few other talking head experts to not always convincingly attempt to add some social and historical context to proceedings.

Thus we get some footage of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, the Beatles and Mary Quant but claims that the Freeze changed the country forever seem a bit overblown to me. The weather is just the weather after all, something we accept as the backdrop to our lives for good and bad and to try to say it's more than that certainly overstates things in my view.

Comparisons are made with more recent bouts of severe cold weather, most notably the so-called "Beast from the East" of a few years ago which was chickenfeed compared to what we see here. I did appreciate seeing the historical news footage of frozen rivers, iced-over roads and the snow-blanketed countryside but as a documentary this felt rather thin and slight, providing a mere snow-shower rather than the full-blown blizzard of information I was anticipating.

Just as a footnote, watching it together, my wife made the observation that she was likely a Big-Freeze baby herself, so at least some good came out of it!