The Monocled Mutineer is a 1986 BBC television drama series starring Paul McGann about the Étaples mutiny in 1917 during the First World War.

The four-part serial, which was the first historical screenplay written by Alan Bleasdale, dramatised the life of British Army deserter Percy Toplis.

[1] After ten million people watched the first episode,[2] British right-wing media vilified the series as an example of left-wing bias at the BBC.

One of the series' advisers Julian Putkowski, a WWI military historian, distanced himself from the completed production citing the real Percy Toplis was never involved in the mutinies at Étaples, France.

Instead of being a rest and recuperation area, weary troops are put through rigorous training drills in the "Bull Ring" overseen by brutal NCOs known as "Canaries" (because of the yellow sash they wear on their caps).

As he commented: "My grandfather died on the Western Front six months before my father was born, and I found that a great pull to the story ..." On 9 September The Daily Telegraph's Defence Correspondent John Keegan criticised The Monocled Mutineer.

The BBC's Managing Director of Television, Bill Cotton, further defended the series on the basis that it expressed "the greater truth about World War I".

However, the damage had been done thanks to their original press campaign which had called The Monocled Mutineer a "true-life story"; Alasdair Milne blamed this on their advertising agency.