Amber Neely
The World War II drama, "Masters of the Air," produced by the same team behind "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific," will begin airing episodes on January 26 on Apple TV+.
"Masters of the Air" is a nine-episode miniseries based on Donald L. Miller's book of the same name and written by John Orloff.
The story follows the 100th Bomb Group, the "Bloody Hundredth," on perilous bombing missions over Nazi Germany, depicting their challenges in extreme conditions and the emotional toll as they contributed to defeating the Third Reich.
"Masters of the Air" is produced by Apple Studios, with Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman serving as executive producers. The cast features Academy Award nominee Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Academy Award nominee Barry Keoghan, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook, and Ncuti Gatwa.
"Tom and Steven have always wanted to visualize cinematically what our author Don Miller has called, this 'singular event in the history of warfare,'" Goetzman said in a statement. "We're thrilled that Apple TV+ has given us the opportunity to combine the efforts of so many talented people, on-screen and behind the camera, to tell this important story."
"Masters of the Air" is the latest in a line of WWII miniseries that also includes "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific." Both Emmy-winning series were made for HBO. "Masters of the Air" was initially developed for HBO but later moved to Apple.
"Masters of the Air" marks the second show Apple has produced with Spielberg, the first being the episodic anthology "Amazing Stories" that launched in March of 2020.
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"Masters of the Air" promises to be one of the great WWII miniseries we'll all remember. But it will be missing the most important element of "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific." Those were able to end with interviews of the actual heroes who were involved in those gut-wrenching, heartbreaking battles. Many of Easy Company and the First Marine Division were still alive to tell their stories. It's too late for that now, and I'll miss that aspect. Unless of course they recorded their stories for the Pritzker Military Museum in Chicago or in some other venue. If you're ever in Chicago, this is a must. There's an overwhelming collection of material, letters, videos, audio recordings of the heroes from all our combat actions, from the Revolutionary War up to the present. There's an enormous library, recruiting posters, anything you can think of.
Can't wait to see how Apple pulls this one off, and hope we can look forward to a comparable series on Vietnam. "We Were Soldiers" was a very disappointing realization of Hal Moore's book. (The Ken Burns documentary is the best I've seen, but I had nightmares after seeing the episode featuring the story of one Tunnel Rat).
I read the book years ago and, IMO, the main focus was on how WWII was the first modern air war and that military strategists were having to make it up as they went along...which meant there were a lot of errors that resulted in major losses of human life. Example: there was an influential group at the Pentagon that believed adding a lot of gun turrets to bombers meant that you didn't need escort fighters. So there was a period of time where bombing groups took horrific losses and some argue that the Pentagon's insistence on bombers not needing escorts delayed the production of the P-51 Mustang.
Looks great! BoB is a favorite of mine, and it probably was in some part due to the actors — so I hope they found comparable actors for this series.
I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t go more into dramatizations of historic events. So much has happened in history, and picking any singular event would be more entertaining than most of the fiction that they churn out (and more educational).