It’s hard to believe it’s been two decades since the release of Band of Brothers, the Spielberg/Hanks cooperation that redefined how World War 2 was depicted in television.
Since then, a lot has changed, and neither TV nor the view of that war has remained as squeaky clean or easy to digest. But tell that to either of the two, as Masters of the Air is as old-fashioned as can be. And there’s something timeless and admirable about that.
The ten episodes follow the exploits of the Bloody 100th, the famous bombing squadron nicknamed such for their immense mortality rate in battle. Out of the hundreds that went up to the sky, only dozens came back.
As with Band of Brothers, the sprawling epic covers numerous soldiers, pilots, and members of the ground crew, each narrating events from their perspective. Their journey takes them from America to Africa, and across the desolation of Europe. Not all make it back home, and those that do aren’t the same people as who left.
At its heart, Masters of the Air is the story of Bucky and Buck, played by the impossibly handsome duo of Callum Turner and Austin Butler. They have an ageless leading man quality to them, reminiscent of the war epics that Spielberg and Hanks grew up with. I can’t imagine this a coincidence.
Luckily, neither Turner nor Butler are just pretty faces. Their performance here are spellbinding, communicating the loss of innocence and grief they carry with them as the war drags them further into inhumane events.
In an early episode, Butler helplessly watches a ballet of grotesque imagery unfold before him, as the sky fills with planes, bullets, and bodies in a hypnotic collage. He doesn’t say or anything, it’s as if time is frozen. But look into his blue eyes and see how much Butler does with very little. It’s fine acting, propelled by impeccable directing from Cary Joji Fukunaga, who handles the first four episodes of the series.
When the series scatters to cover the pilots on the ground, both at home and behind enemy lines, Masters of the Air becomes a heart-wrenching mosaic. A tapestry of heroics and brutality where you wish for storybook endings, even as you know they can’t happen.
Thankfully, Masters of the Air is not a glorification of war, nor is it built upon the spectacle of aerial combat. While there are incredible scenes of both, and this is by far the most visually dazzling TV series in recent memory, it’s the human cost of it all that comes to the forefront. Here, the stellar cast of already famous faces mixed with soon-to-be-famous ones really shines. Not a single moment feels wasted, and every celebration and quiet act of compassion is like an oasis in the middle of a desert.
If there’s something to gripe about, it’s that the series is only 10 episodes in length. That’s simply not enough time to cover everything that’s fascinating about these people, and some, like Ncuti Gatwa and Bel Powley, show up late into the story, both with shorter screen times than I’d like.
But that’s asking for more of a good thing, which is always a good sign.
Because Masters of Air isn’t just a good TV series, it’s an all-time great one. Easily comparable to Band of Brothers as a colossal prestige drama, the kind that we’ll look back on in another 20 years, wondering how good we had it.
Spectacularly staged, impeccably written, and without a single bad performance in sight, Masters of the Air is a brilliant exploration of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s classic Hollywood greatness distilled into perfection that feels neither dated nor hokey, despite leaning into the past with all its weight.