The first 2 episodes of Masters of the Air dropped on AppleTV a few days ago and it wasn’t long before there were floods of posts about how awesome it was and about how stunning and full on the combat scenes were, and the usual nitpicking such as the Brit Bashing in episode 2. I got around to watching it a couple of days later, and I’ve been mulling over what I experienced for 2+ days before writing anything – and this is how I feel about it…
Underwhelmed. That’s right, it just didn’t captivate me, and left me feeling like I had just watched a series of random scenes, almost like the deleted scenes b-roll or something. I realise that might be consider sacrilegious. Visually looks great but lacks something. But before I go further let me just say what I thought was great:
The aerial graphics and representation of the air combat and interior of the B-17’s, and obviously the efforts at authenticity with uniforms, equipment and scenery.
The obvious effort to align with the memoirs and recollections of the veterans, and present things as they saw them and understood them. I even didn’t have an issue with the scene in the pub with the RAF Bomber Command…
Unfortunately what I found it lacking is:
No sense of the characters, no understanding of who they are nor any feeling of connection to them, they just feel somewhat 1-dimensional. Band of Brothers had character depth and background in spades, and even though The Pacific had less, it still had a lot more than Masters of the Air has had so far. And those shows had a lot of that in the first episodes. Even the fact it’s only 9 episodes not 10 feeds into this, feeling like they cut most of the preamble and character depth parts from it to save an episode’s worth of filming?
Emotional connection to audience. It felt somewhat dry and emotionally distant, there was nothing pulling you into the 100th Bomb Group’s story or feeling connected with the crews or commanders – again something Band of Brothers had from episode one, and The Pacific had too (albeit not quite as deeply). Even movies like Greyhound and (dare I say it) Saving Private Ryan did this well.
My third thing I feel left it wanting was the lack of any real ‘feel’ of a storyline, it honestly seems like a series of random events chosen from the 100th Bomb Group’s history in chronological sequence that aren’t that directly connected, and as viewers we are just taking random hops along the time line of the formation, and there is no real detail around what’s happening in between them.
Having said that I’m not saying its not a great show and not worth watching, and that it’s not presenting a good effort at recreating an important part of the history of World War II, but just that I was left feeling a bit ho-hum afterwards, and not particularly itching for Friday to roll around (in NZ) to see the next episode.
And I’m certainly not decrying the historical value of the formation and the vets who served and the losses they suffered that is being represented. And having not read the book it’s based on I am relying solely on the mini-series to tell the story.
My hope is that it’s just off to a slow start, their will be more pull to engage with the characters, and the storyline will become more organically contiguous (or at least there will be better continuity when leaping from each major event or action). And it will eventually draw you in and have both the emotion and the sense of action that it’s two previous siblings had…
I do look forward to the hope of revising my opinion once episode 9 concludes in 7 weeks time…
