TV Show Review: Band of Brothers

 

Band of Brothers

Playtone/HBO

Miniseries

2001

Rated: Mature Audiences

I watched The Pacific (the miniseries based on the War in the Pacific) prior to watching Band of Brothers. I am going to avoid comparing the two until the very end of this review as I think each miniseries should be viewed on its own merits.

I want to first address the cast of this miniseries. I recognized by sight most of the main actors in this series as being from other movies or shows that I knew: Matthew Settle (Gossip Girl), Donnie Wahlberg, Scott Grimes (Robin Hood), Rick Gomez (What About Brian?), Michael Cudlitz (Southland), Ron Livingston (Office Space), James McAvoy (Chronicles of Narnia) and David Schwimmer (Friends) among others. I thought that the acting was top notch. My favorite characters were Major Winters (Damian Lewis), Captain Lewis Nixon (Livingson), and Technician Fourth Grade George Luz (Gomez). You could certainly feel the camaraderie between the characters and feel with them as they went through these experiences. The best all over scene for me was toward the end of the series when they find the concentration camp – you can feel all of the despair, pain and emotions for both the soldiers and prisoners.

I don’t know much about the actual history of this time period but everything appeared to be visually accurate and looked appropriate. According to various interviews they stayed particularly accurate to the things that these men went through with the necessity of merging some experiences just due to the constraints of a miniseries.

One thing that was hard for me with this miniseries (as opposed to The Pacific) was that it was harder to connect with individual characters. There were so many different people that you are following – you can visually recognize them but I could not recall names or know much about their back story. I also found it more difficult to discern the individual battles in the first half of the series – everything just seemed like shooting and the scenery all really looked the same to me. I think that the emphasis of this series is not the individual but the experience of the group.

While I didn’t love the individual episodes, overall I very much enjoyed the series as a whole. I think you really need to look at it as a whole series. I enjoyed the interviews and lead in commentary from those men who actually lived the events and were the inspiration for the characters that were being portrayed in this series. They really helped to set up the events that were going to happen.

Here is a trailer of this show for your enjoyment.

 

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