Masters of the Air [Apple]

Yeah the ground scenes aren't great, and the characters don't really grab you. The writing of those bits isn't the best.

Air scenes are good.

While I love band of brothers, I could never get into the Pacific. Too much focus on their previous lives before the war.

I feel Memphis Belle tells the story better. But that's quite dated now especially the special effects. I think the soundtrack music really helps make Memphis Belle.

I still think the old war movies like Battle of Britain etc. Dunkirk tell the story of the events and the people characters much better. Perhaps because they had been in the war.

Masters of the air has fantastic air battle scenes. Raised the bar there. No argument.

Stuff on Apple TV seems to be of higher picture quality than other streaming services. Maybe it my imagination. I'm not using an Apple TV box either.

I remember seeing a documentary years ago where one of the aircrew on one of the bombers recounted how one or two planes headed off in a different direction to the main group. That wasn't only occasion that some people chickened out and went to Sweden. He said it was embarrassing for the American government after the war ended, when one of their diplomats arrived in Sweden to meet with Swedish government reps and tried to ignore the American bombers parked by the hangars. I don't know what happened to the crews afterwards. 😗

It wasn't a great documentary if it seems) its main focus was Sweden=Desertion and being surprised by US Bombers in Sweden after the war.

Considering they were returning crews from Sweden back to the US during the war, and investigated such claims during the war...

Some even ended up in Sweden more than once.

So how could a US official be surprised to see US Bombers in Sweden after the war?

Thought the same watching 2&3 last night. The scenes in the air are both thrilling and informative. Hard to believe those things manage to stay in the air when you see them from the inside full of crew running around. Stuff like frostbite injuries are something you would never think of too.

The downtime stuff is all the usual stupid cliches stuff like rivalries with soft "limeys"

Good show so far. The aerial scenes are very good. In real life 1943 daylight bombing was brutal for the USAAF and they suffered very heavy losses until things turned sharply in 1944, interested to see how its portrayed in the show.

Dialogue and acting is a bit cheesy, the ground drama is pretty generic and some of the CGI looks a bit under-baked, but definitely well worth a watch for the mission scenes.

Really enjoyed Band of Brothers and the Pacific as well, surprised that the latter gets forgotten about a lot. BoB in particular makes you really care about the characters, can't really say I have much investment in anyone in Masters of the Air.

They weren't surprised, they were embarrassed. You obviously don't want to believe what took place, hence the nit-picking. The documentary didn't focus on desertion. that was just one anecdote in the entire programme.

Here's a page with a load of chat on the subject of genuine and non-genuine flights that ended up in neutral countries.

Airforce Deserters (narkive.com)

There's a YouTube channel that goes into insane detail on US Bombers data. The narration is a bit dry, but anyone interested in the stats might find it interesting.

I don't think that's true at all. It has 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.3/10 on IMDB, 93% on Google reviews, 86 on Metacritic, 4/5 on Letterboxd, etc.

It was critically acclaimed. It received tons of awards. That doesn't mean people can't dislike it of course, but I have no idea where it was "very poorly received".

A SeaQuest DSV style episode where one of the planes gets teleported away by aliens.

I haven't watched lads, but it seems like a legitimate criticism of a show that will be judged as much on its action sequences as it's characters.

Just because it's what happened doesn't have to mean it'll make good television.

I've also heard it echoed elsewhere, the action is visually superb but all a bit samey. As opposed to BoB or the Pacific where the are different types of action in different locations, summertime town in northern France, winter Bastogne etc.

We'll start to see some variation as the episodes progress, just this week we had:

Later in the series we'll start seeing the Tuskegee Airmen and perhaps the change of location as some of the characters get sent to the Asian front?

Do you mean Band of Brothers or Battle of Britain. I assume the former.

"Unbelievable characters". Who exactly is unbelievable and why? I'd like to hear your expert historical analysis.

They drink, they f*ck and do their jobs like real people. They're on a base in a foreign country during the war, I'm just not sure what else people are expecting.

Given that its promoted as being made by the same team as Band of Brothers I suppose people are expecting something similar to that highly character driven show with very memorable characters.

One historically accurate problem this show has is the insane death rate for bombers. Making it hard to develop characters.

They were not even in the most dangerous bomber of time,

The B-24 was faster with a longer range and had a bigger bomb load than the B-17 but is largely forgotten compared to the B-17s as it had a more bulky and blocky appearance and it was less survivable in a crash.

Very good vide on it.

Only one way to find out...