Andy McNab's Tour of Duty
Andy McNab's Tour of Duty is a British documentary television series about the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. First broadcast from 10 June to 15 July 2008 on ITV4, the show is presented by ex-SAS soldier Andy McNab, and is cast as an insight into the life of the Allied soldiers in these conflicts, setting aside the already well documented politics of the conflicts and giving accounts in the soldier's own personal frames of reference. The series combines first hand accounts and amateur film footage shot by the soldiers  on the ground, with official archive footage from the Ministry of Defence, and reconstructions. The series was first commissioned by ITV from Flashback Productions as a 6-part series of 1-hour episodes, to be broadcast exclusively as original programming for the digital channel ITV4 in a move to increased spending on the channel's output in a bid to increase the channel's audience share, and target the channel toward a demographic of 25- to 44-year-old men. Season 1. Each of five episodes covers a basic military topic. The majority of each 1 hour episode is made  up of the narration and reconstruction of a particular engagement. In conjunction, a second unrelated engagement is also narrated and reconstructed in parallel in a short slot. Both reconstructions are interspersed with the accounts of those involved and real footage. Also included are so-called 'McNab briefings', where McNab describes particular weapons and tactics. Background information about the units is also given.