How Band of Brothers shaped the future of television
It’s 9 September 2001. A young history buff called Tom is sitting down to watch the big new HBO series, Band of Brothers. Like many Americans, Tom’s family don’t have an HBO subscription, and so he’s had to go over to his next-door neighbours, Earl and Doris. “I looked forward to it for a long time,” he says, “but wasn’t prepared for how great it was”. He was in apposite company: Earl had been at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He had met Doris in England, where she had endured the blitz, and married her before taking her back to the United States. And now, some 50 years later, Earl, Doris and Tom were sitting together, watching the most ambitious televisual representation of America’s role in the Second World War ever committed to the screen – just two days before America’s place in the world order would shift once again.
, a 10-part depiction of the journey of a parachute regiment – Easy Company – across the Western Front and towards Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest outpost, was a landmark moment in television history. It formed the first part of a triptych looking at Americantold the story of infantrymen deployed across Europe, while, almost 10 years later, the show’s creators reunited for , a vivid retelling of naval warfare in the Eastern theatre. Now, with another decade in the rearview mirror, the air force is having its time in the sun, with starting this week . This loose trilogy of shows, which depict the three main branches of the US Army, were all produced by the powerhouse Hollywood duo of and , with key collaborators including Gary Goetzman and John Orloff binding together a singular vision of American military history.
