Easy Company Medic Eugene Roe

The Times October 5, 2001

Easy Company Medic Eugene Roe: Band Of Brothers in the News: The Times October 5, 2001

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By Derek D. Tircuit (Dtircuit) (216.78.134.127 - 216.78.134.127) on Wednesday, October 24, 2001 - 10:18 am:

The war of the Rosses

BY CAITLIN MORAN

That's just what Band of Brothers needs - an angry palaeontologist

Tonight, Ross from Friends is training Donnie Wahlberg from New Kids On The Block and the red-haired bloke from the BBC1 drama Hearts and Bones to win the Second World War.
War isn’t pretty, so Ross (aka David Schwimmer) is having to be quite harsh. As a captain in the 101st Airborne Division’s Easy Company, Ross makes his men jog up a hill every night until they fall over. While they’re falling over, he shouts things like: “There’s an ambulance waiting for you at the bottom of the hill, Easy Company! ” He won’t let anyone drink water from their water bottles. You really start to see why Monica from Friends has the problems she has — if my sibling was this kind of a freak, I think I’d want to go out with Magnum PI in Series 4.

And as for Monica’s “other” problems, Band of Brothers casts new light on her sudden weight-loss when, as a special treat, Ross orders a special meal for the frazzled Easy Company. “I like spaghetti,” he says dreamily to his lackey. “Make it spaghetti.” And so to the canteen, where the weary soldiers cheer the break from their army-issue lunch of 8oz of grey. The Italian-Americans, in a flurry of Italian-Americanness, take a break from the war to point out that it’s not really spaghetti — just army noodles with ketchup — but, under Ross’s regime, even this is like sunlight on the face of a mole.

Suddenly, in a flurry of camera angles, Ross comes striding through the canteen doors, so evil that he appears to kick the camera along the floor. “Orders changed!” he barks. “Easy Company is running up Corree Mountain! Move!” Of course, Corree Mountain is soon awash with men vomiting up spaghetti as they run; a spectacle so miserable the viewer is faced with the very real fear that Donnie Wahlberg from New Kids On The Block and the red-haired man from Hearts and Bones might bale out back to Civvy Street and leave the Nazis free to win the war. However, in this moment of pasta-strewn darkness, it becomes apparent that Ross’s Gumption Crucible has done its work: he has turned New Kids into fighting men.

It’s clearly a cue for the viewer to relax, safe in the knowledge that we are in the company of men who can be taken through 14 different locations during ten hour-long episodes without breaking character, and that, writer Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg willing, Band of Brothers will be victoriously concluded by Christmas.

Like tights, pies made of offal and drinking hot wine with bits in, a huge heavyweight drama about the Second World War is something that one would only ever consider with the onset of winter. In summer, we’re too busy chasing butterflies to contemplate spending two consecutive Fridays watching 30 mud-stained actors hump a large item of ordnance 120 yards up a ridge. Now, thanks to low-pressure fronts from the Atlantic, I was practically salivating at the chance — although no thanks to the BBC, which has been curiously low-key in its touting of what is, in conjunction with HBO, its biggest drama production.

However, as Band of Brothers unfurls its mighty length over tonight’s inaugural double-bill, it becomes apparent why the BBC hasn’t gone overboard bigging it up. After two hours of breathless viewing, the BBC’s visible contribution appears to consist of: one stiff old gentleman on a bicycle (one scene only); one cockney geezer (one scene only); one red-haired bloke from Hearts and Bones (admittedly the star of the show, but at the cost of pretending to be American); one phone-call to HBO’s location manager to tell them that they know of a rainy field in Kent for the Rainy Scene In Kent scene. Frankly, it feels about as British as Elizabeth Taylor.

Still, as I’m sure we’re all aware by now, not being very British isn’t a particular drawback to good drama, and Band of Brothers is good. Acted as if it’s already won six Emmys, and shot in the muted browns and greens of last autumn’s Prada collection, it reminds you that the most effective place to display the effects of war isn’t in a thousand-extra re-creation of army forces, but in the faces of a cast so unknown, in the majority, that we don’t know whether they’re going to make it to the end or not.

By xhkosmal (217.78.137.20) on Friday, March 12, 2010 - 02:15 am: