‘I Was Going Home. I Just Wished More Of Us Were…’
Band of Brothers and The Pacific are two of the most celebrated and accomplished TV shows ever made, particularly the former. Rewatching both of them in preparation for Masters of the Air really brought home again just how powerful they are, how moving. For the same team to return to WWII but this time through the eyes of fighter pilots was an exciting prospect and while it’s definitely the weakest of the three entries, this is still exceptional television…
We follow the exploits of the 100th Bomb Group, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber unit in the Eighth Air Force in eastern England during World War II as they fly mission after mission in an often futile attempt simply to stay alive. The incredible ensemble cast comprises Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle and many others.
Whilst Band of Brothers and The Pacific mostly eschewed big stars to go with relative unknowns, Master of the Air presents us with bona fide movie stars. While this is sometimes a little distracting, it’s difficult to believe a man as beautiful as Austin Butler could do anything other than work in entertainment, it does lend some gravitas to a TV show that is already exquisitely directed (by such luminaries as Cary Fukunaga, Ryan Boden & Anna Fleck and series veteran Tim Van Patten). All this talent means that Masters of the Air was pretty much guaranteed to be a success and so it goes. At its best, the show makes us feel like we are part of the 100th, going through basic training, fighting in British bars and dying by the thousands. Despite having echoes of the previous entries in the series, this never feels like a bland retread, particularly the early episodes in which we see more of the characters’ pre-war life than in previous outings. Butler and Turner share incredible chemistry as the two “Bucks”, but I was most impressed with Boyle as the intrepid navigator Lt. Harry “Cros” Crosby – a character who in many ways anchors the series and holds the audience’s hand from the start of deployment to the end of the war.
While we never quite get a ‘Why We Fight’ moment, the final episode really is a show-stopper, 90 minutes of television that feels both cinematic and epic in scope. A true achievement. My only criticism would be that the fight scenes that take place in the air are a little incoherent. The masks worn by the pilots make it tough to make out what is actually going on and what is happening to whom.
Masters of the Air, as with its predecessors, has not received either the viewership or the acclaim that it has deserved upon initial release but it will no doubt find its audience in the years to come – profound and important television.
