There has been a strange lack of hype around Masters of the Air. It is a huge, epic second world war drama, more than a decade in the making, filled with matinee-idol movie stars. It follows Band of Brothers and The Pacific, but moves the story from land and water to the sky. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are executive producers and Dee Rees and Cary Fukunaga are among its directors. Yet it is has arrived quietly and politely.
Why? It’s on Apple TV+, for one. Perhaps, too, it’s a casualty of an oversaturated age, in which too much television has been produced. I suspect the buzz is about to make a late appearance, though, because Masters of the Air is truly fantastic television. Over nine episodes, it follows the American men of the 100th bomb group as they undertake perilous aerial missions. As Barry Keoghan’s Lt Curtis Biddick has it – and picture this in an old-time New York accent – they have to “knock one off and drop bombs on those Nazi fucks”.
The cast list is so large that the credits are stuffed with shots of actors we don’t even meet until far, far into the series (Ncuti Gatwa and Bel Powley, for example), but at the heart of it all is the inseparable duo of Maj John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) and Maj Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler). Bucky is a rabble-rouser and a drinker who fights with passion, while Buck is solid, sedate and tempers Bucky’s fire. Both actors are phenomenal. As quickly becomes clear, their missions are not so much fraught with danger as a compulsory ticket to a mortality lottery with dreadful odds. Every time they depart, there is no guarantee they will make it back.
You might think this would make it hard to get attached to any of the characters, and that a wise viewer would try to avoid doing so, but this is far from the case. The emotional attachments are raw and almost immediate. Later in the series, we are told that many of those who survive refuse to get to know the new, younger intake; they know what it is like to lose friends. The Bloody Hundredth, as they were known, suffered enormous losses and Masters of the Air is determined not to glorify war.
But it is as thrilling as it is terrible. That is part of the reason that some of the men are able to go up again and again, despite the grim reaper hovering over the cockpit. You can tell they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it, although I watch most of the aerial battles with my hands clamped to my face, occasionally covering my eyes. When we are told that there is a minute until they reach the bombs’ target, it becomes the longest minute, and it is horribly, gut-twistingly tense. It is gory and harrowing, but never loses sight of its humanity.
What strikes me most about Masters of the Air, though, is how old-fashioned it is, despite the of-the-moment technical achievements that no doubt come with a budget so big. It is grand, traditional television, reaching for the big moments in every scene. It is bombastic, but earns it. Every time a line such as: “The formation’s a mess,” or: “We’ve got a long road ahead of us,” or: “Let’s rack ’em up and knock ’em down” appears, you are right there with them, waiting to count the number of planes that make it back to the runway.
You can tell everything you need to know about it, in fact, from the opening credits, which are the most old-school cinematic opening credits I have seen in a long time. We get sweeping orchestral music, stormy skies, slow-motion shots of characters saluting, marching, staring into the distance as the wind buffets their perfect hair, small children staring wistfully at the skies. The feeling they evoke in me sits somewhere between must-see Sunday night drama and the blockbuster cinema of the 1990s.
Masters of the Air isn’t trying to be modern. It seems, at times, to actively resist it. But this leads to a timelessness that suits its mission very well. Apple is releasing the first two episodes together, then subsequent episodes weekly, which also seems apposite. For all of its wonders, Masters of the Air feels like the end of something – a season finale to the long-running series Extravagant TV. But if it is the last we will see of its kind, then what a way to go.
• Masters of the Air is on Apple TV+ from 26 January
