As so often around Remembrance Sunday, television provided a mixture of truth and deception. The BBC gave its usual coverage to the unnecessarily militarised ceremonies at the Albert Hall and the Cenotaph: church and state joining together with the armed forces to repeat the old lie - Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen's classic lines about the mendacity surrounding warfare were at the heart of Wilfred Owen - A Remembrance Tale (BBC1), which traced the life of the poet who, during the First World War, told the truth about the fighting on the Western Front. The programme was presented by Jeremy Paxman, whose rigorous interviewing techniques combined with his obvious enthusiasm for Owen's work to construct a gripping portrait.

Paxman noted, for example, that Owen was barely 5ft. 6in. tall - a height which would have barred him from joining the army before 1916, by which time the regulations had been relaxed because so many recruits were required. Wilfred Owen was sent to France in 1917, where he suffered shell-shock and was sent home to Craiglockhart hospital in Scotland. Here he met another war poet - Siegfried Sasssoon - and Paxman showed how Sassoon's suggestions tightened up some of Wilfred's poems. In September 1918, Owen returned to France, where he was killed seven days before the war ended.

My Boy Jack (ITV1) dramatised the story of another young soldier who was killed on the Western Front. David Haig adapted it from his own stage play about Rudyard Kipling, who used his influence to get his myopic son, John, into the army. John died in France on the day after his 18th birthday. John was played by Daniel Radcliffe (alias Harry Potter), who looked suitably fresh and naïve - and rather stiff, although that suited his role.

David Haig, who often appears as pompous characters, was excellent as Kipling, but the most telling performance came from Carey Mulligan as John Kipling's sister, who brought touches of gentle humanity to the dour drama. Kim Cattrall (formerly of Sex and the City) as Kipling's wife was cast against type but was surprisingly effective in the role. When Rudyard Kipling tried to claim that their son was in some way lucky, she spoke words which made a useful corrective to those who talk about "our glorious dead" or other misplaced pieties: "He wasn't lucky, or brave, or happy. He died in the rain, he couldn't see a thing, he was alone. You can't persuade me that there's any glory in that."

The most moving programme of the week was The Not Dead (Channel 4), in which Brian Hill interviewed three servicemen who had been scarred by their experiences in war - from Malaya in 1951 to Bosnia in 1994 and Iraq in 2003. Private Holland, the Malaya veteran, said: "If you're an infantry soldier, you are taught with a gun and an edged weapon to go and kill somebody . . . You just do it. I can't explain why." After more than 50 years, he was still visibly upset by what he did and saw in Malaya. The soldier who experienced warfare in Iraq was prompted to join the army through seeing troops from the Falklands War "coming back to the hero celebrations and such". But none of the veterans felt welcome when they returned home and began suffering disturbing after-effects.

The interviews were interspersed with poems by Simon Armitage describing their experiences. In one way, the poetry heightened the impact but it also added an unwelcome element of artifice. The most poignant moments came from the interviewees themselves, as when Private Holland described visiting an old woman: "She opened a drawer in the sideboard and she took a picture from it which she polished with her apron - and then she began to cry, quite badly." The photo was of her youngest son, who Private Holland had witnessed being shot in Malaya. Holland comforted her by lying to her that her son died instantly, without any pain.