It's spring, which means it's time for prestige miniseries, and if there's anything that counts as a prestige miniseries, it's the WWII shows executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. "Band of Brothers" has been required viewing if you have any kind of interest in WWII, and its spiritual successor "Masters of the Air" has been in the works for over a decade. An extremely qualified cast and crew have been assembled to tell the story of the "Bloody Hundredth," a US Air Force Unit stationed in the UK that flew missions over Europe and Africa in WWII.
I want to tell you that "Masters of the Air" is worth the wait, and that the series lives up to "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific." Clearly no expense was spared in putting together the production, and everyone involved delivers very professional, committed, and well-researched work. However, the show doesn't strike me as anything special. Some episodes are more exciting than others, such as the third installment that depicts the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission. We follow the combatants through planning, missions, internments, escapes, and plenty more. However, it's only the very, very end of the finale, where a montage of stills explain what happened to each of the major characters after the war, that actually hit me emotionally.
This is not the fault of the cast. The three major POV characters we follow through the series are Maj. "Buck" Clevan (Austin Butler), Maj. "Bucky" Egan (Callum Turner) and Lt. Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle). There are several notable guest stars, including Barry Keoghan, Bel Powley, and Ncuti Gatwa. I don't think it's the fault of the writing. Co-creator John Orloff wrote most of the episodes, and he worked on the original "Band of Brothers." His instincts are old fashioned, including having several episodes begin with narration reminiscing about aspects of the war experience, but the storytelling is sound. I appreciate the inclusion of the Tuskegee Airmen in the later episodes and the many nods to support staff, maintenance crews, and other participants in the war.
There's been some grumbling about the effects work, which I agree isn't the best. There's a ton of CGI in the flight scenes, and deployed in such a way that elements like the aircraft, flak, and smoke plumes look far too perfect and unreal. However, the larger problem is really that the whole show has a certain attitude of uncomfortable hagiography to it. There are too many rough edges that have been sanded off and too many compromises made with the facts in order to show us the kind of heroic narrative we're expecting. "Masters of the Air" feels like the show that "Band of Brothers" managed to avoid being - too idealized, too self-mythologizing, and too beholden to notions about what WWII media is supposed to look like. There's a two and a half minute opening credits sequence that is so self-important and so reverent, it borders on parody.
Of course, this is the point. There are plenty of similar WWII movies with played-up patriotic derring-do that are classics. However, those movies functioned very differently from "Masters of the Air." The big issue is that we don't get to know any of the characters individually, well enough to care about them. "Band of Brothers" got away with it, because Easy Company being on the ground in such terrible conditions made the group as a whole very sympathetic and compelling to follow. With "Masters of the Air," the only character I really got attached to was our narrator, Harry Crosby, who goes from hapless navigator to stressed out strategist as the show rolls on, and he's rarely in the thick of the action. Buck and Bucky just aren't very interesting, despite their bravery, and the others are difficult to keep track of or are gone too soon.
I respect the amount of effort that went into this project, and I suspect that people who really love WWII media, especially the aircraft geeks, will have a great time with "Masters of the Air." I, however, had a better time with the accompanying documentary about the real Bloody Hundredth, which I happily recommend to anyone curious about the series.
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