TV – Page 411 – Through the Shattered Lens

HBO’s 10-part mini-series in 2001 adapting historian Stephen Ambrose’s best-selling book, Band of Brothers, was a hit and success with both critics and the general audiences. The book and the series detailed the life of members of Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division during it’s campaign. A campaign which first began during training in Toccoa, Georgia then moving on to the Allied training in the UK before participating in some of the bloodiest battles of the Allied Western Front Campaign: Normandy, Operation Market Garden, Battle of Bastogne and finally the taking of Berchtesgarden and Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

The mini-series was known for it’s historical accuracy and attention to battlefield detail. Band of Brothers owes much of its visual and film-style to Stephen Spielberg’s (he was one of it’s exec. producers with Tom Hanks being another) WWII epic, Saving Private Ryan. The heavily washed-out color stock gave the series an almost black-and-white quality with just the sudden splashes of color like red and orange to highlight blood and fire. When it came to the battles the series set the bar quite high with Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan being the only two to match it in technical mastery.

The series has become a yearly staple comes Memorial and Veteran’s Day in the US. I could always wake-up on those two holidays, turn on The History Channel and see a Band of Brothers marathon. Easter has it’s DeMille The Ten Commandments and these two holidays celebrating the sacrifices of soldiers, living and dead, have their BoB.

It’s now 2010, HBO Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks go for round two with another 10-part WW2 mini-series simply titled, The Pacific. This second series will move from the European Theater of Operations over to the Pacific. Like the first mini-series, The Pacific will tell the story of the war from the eyes of a couple men on the ground. This time the men are Marines of the 1st Marine Division and through the eyes of some of these men we see WW2 fought in the Pacific and despite being fought in the same war it distinguishes itself for it’s sheer brutality. Audiences will learn such hallowed names such as Guadalcanal, Peleliu and Okinawa.

So, March 2010 people who enjoyed Band of Brothers should definitely tune in to HBO and watch it’s bookend series: The Pacific.

The Pacific Trailer

The Pacific Trailer 2

The Pacific On-Set Featurette

The beginning of the new millenium brought to tv something which was relegated to MTV for most of the 1990’s. I speak of the so-called “reality tv” shows like The Real World and Road Rules. They were a nice enough diversion from the usualy network and cable fare. They drew great ratings for a cable show and with each successive season for both series becoming more and more like car-wrecks with their beautiful and quite fake cast members the other networks began to take notice. In comes from nowhere Mark Burnett and his pitch to the CBS network of a survival show where ordinary citizens picked to play were to try and survive the season until only one is left to win the million dollar cash prize. Thus was born the reality-tv show, Survivor.

Soon other networks began to greenlight their own reality-tv shows (which were as real as some of the boobs on the cast of later Real World cast members). Fox gave us American Idol. NBC would introduce The Biggest Loser and Donald Trump’s The Apprentice. ABC got into the act with Who Wants to be A Millionaire then with The Bachelor (and to show they were not sexist, The Bachelorette). Even cable channels like The Food Network, Bravo and AMC got into the reality-tv show. Hell, even The Discovery Channel started their own which actually delivered on the label of “reality-tv” with their very popular series, Deadliest Catch.

While the decade from 2000-thru-2009 seemed to be dominated by these cheap to produce “reality shows” the decade had their bonafide hits of every kind. Every type of show were ably represented from comedies, dramas, police procedurals to pop-level shows. The Writer’s Strike of 2007-2008 ended some very good shows just when they were about to breakout. While of some these shows were able to get a second-chance either with a follow-up full season (many series had seasons cut short due to the strike) others got picked up by cable networks like USA or TNT.

Below is the list of the 20 of my favorite tv shows of the past decade. I decided against doing a “Best of…” list since some shows that many would say should be on the list won’t be since I never really watched them or got into them. So, as a list of favorites I’m able to decide on picking shows I’ve actually spent time watching at least halfway into the first season, if not all of the episodes shown.