By Chrisdfw (Chrisdfw) (209.245.234.95 - 209.245.234.95) on Wednesday, October 10, 2001 - 11:39 am:

First Night: Band of Brothers, BBC2
Authenticity lets Spielberg lose his sense of humour

Review by Robert Hanks
06 October 2001

Americans make war movies the same way they make war: relying on money and overwhelming technological superiority to flatten all resistance.

At a reported cost of $120m (£80m), Band of Brothers is the most expensive television mini-series ever made, and it is not hard to see where the money went. No other recreation of the Second World War has brought home the scale of the war as this one does. The most extraordinary scene in last night's opening double-bill showed Allied paratroopers on their way to Normandy for D-Day: the air swarmed thick with planes, the sky glowing with gunfire and flame; and then the parachutes floating down, hundreds upon hundreds of them.

This sense of authenticity underpins the whole series, but it is also its great weakness. The series, based on a book by an American historian, Stephen Ambrose, tells the true story of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division – surviving members of Easy have been roped in to introduce each episode through snatches of interview.

Steven Spielberg, who co-produced the series with Tom Hanks, his star in Saving Private Ryan, was quoted in last week's Radio Times as saying that: "We owe it to them to acquit their stories with honour." At times, this desire to do them honour seemed to have constrained the imagination of Spielberg's classy team of directors. The narrative was sometimes slow, often confusing, with a multiplicity of characters given only the skimpiest of introductions. And there was no room for irony or questioning national myths; instead, the whole two hours took its cue from a remark made by one officer about Lieutenant Richard Winters (Damien Lewis): "No flaws, no vices, no sense of humour."

But the sense of authenticity also provided compensation. It gave the producers the confidence to start with an episode that included almost no action – "Currahee" showed Easy in training in the two years leading up to D-Day, with never a bullet in sight. And with the troops' arrival in Normandy, the narrative dared to be messily impartial, depicting soldiers in battle as cruel, selfish, courageous and fiercely loyal.

Some have complained that Band of Brothers is part of the process by which America has taken over the history of the Second World War. But the sad fact is, British television lacks both the money and the nerve to mount a series like this.

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