Don’t watch this on your phone. Come to that, your TV screen won’t be big enough either. To fully enjoy Masters Of The Air (AppleTV+), you will have to rent a cinema.
This World War II aerial drama, which follows the men of the US Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group on suicidally courageous missions over Germany, is visually immense.
We see vast skyscapes filled with Flying Fortress bombers weaving through cloudbursts of anti-aircraft fire, while Luftwaffe fighters scream from the sun with all guns blazing.
In an early sequence, a squadron of planes races up a Greenland fjord before Austin Butler, as pilot hero Major Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven, ends up in a hurricane.
In another film, hapless navigator Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle) sends his crew to the wrong side of the Channel before struggling back to base for an emergency landing in an East Anglian field – as American jeeps rush to the rescue from all directions .
In an early sequence, a squadron of planes races up a Greenland fjord before Austin Butler, as pilot hero Major Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven, ends up in a hurricane.
Kai Alexander plays Sgt. William Quinn in ‘Masters of the Air’
Austin Butler as Major. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven and Callum Turner play Major. John ‘Bucky’ Egan
The spectacle never stops. One heartbreaking scene follows another, with a vibrancy and authenticity never before possible in television history.
This is 1943 and the Americans are just arriving in Europe… three years late, as always, but very welcome.
The only unstable moment in the story happens at the very beginning, and it’s completely unnecessary.
We meet Buck and his girlfriend at a bar in the United States, dancing to the sounds of Artie Shaw and drinking with Buck’s best friend, a fellow aviator… named Bucky.
A long and repetitive banter ensues, explaining why they have the same nickname. It’s a confusing distraction, especially since what’s special about their friendship is how different they are.
Buck Gayle is laconic, undramatic, a lanky and idealistic young man from the cowboy country of Wyoming.
Butler plays him petulantly like Elvis, uncompromisingly like John Wayne. Major John ‘Bucky’ Egan (Callum Turner) is loud and wildly reckless – prone to starting a fight in a pool bar with a narwhal tusk for a sword, or making a bet with all the locals in an English pub that he will his side will be an apple on his head so that their darts champion could prick it like William Tell.
The accents and costumes are impeccable. The hairstyles are less confident, all more or less modern, which is strange but hardly relevant.
The spectacle never stops. One heartbreaking scene follows another, with a vibrancy and authenticity never before possible in television history
Austin Butler, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks at the world premiere of ‘Masters Of The Air’
Sawyer Spielberg, Callum Turner, Steven Spielberg, Austin Butler, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman attend the world premiere
Tom Hanks and Callum Turner at the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Masters of the Air’
Produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who also created the epic war story Band Of Brothers more than twenty years ago, each episode puts an intense emphasis on its technical brilliance.
Long tracking shots take us through the crowd, so we catch snippets of conversation as we pass, or along the entire fuselage of a bomber, seeing each of the ten crew members as they sweat, curse and struggle.
Based on the book by historian Donald L. Miller, the script bombards us with military details.
As dozens of pilots cram into a shed-like briefing room, their intelligence officer unfolds tons of facts: ‘Along the Frisian Islands, from Northern Eye to Lange Hoog, you can expect concentrated anti-aircraft fire from identified batteries consisting of 88mm and 105mm guns, guided by Radar from Würzburg, in a straight line of nine miles to the target.’
The takeoff checklist is equally thorough: “Transfer valves off, switches off, flap valves open and locked, throttles closed….”
Far from being boring, these litanies become the tense harbinger of flights into terror.
When an attack has to be broken off and the German fighters swarm mercilessly, we already feel as if we are sitting in those planes next to the crew: aluminum death traps that can explode into infernos in the blink of an eye.
As the credits roll, you will believe that you are lucky to have survived.