Band of Brothers (miniseries)

Plot

Band of Brothers is a dramatized account of "Easy Company" (part of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment), assigned to the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division during World War II. Over the course of ten episodes, the series details the company's exploits during the war. Starting with jump training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, Band of Brothers follows the unit through the American airborne landings in Normandy, Operation Market Garden, the Siege of Bastogne, and on to the war's end. It includes the taking of the Eagle's Nest at Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden and refers to the surrender of Japan. Major Richard Winters (1918–2011) is the central character featured, shown working to accomplish the missions and keep his men together and safe. While the series features a large ensemble cast, each episode generally focuses on a single character, following his actions during certain events (for example, the Siege of Bastogne or Operation Market Garden).

As the series is based on historic events, the fates of the characters conform to the persons from which they are drawn. Numerous characters die or sustain serious wounds, some of which lead to survivors' being sent home; in other cases, soldiers recover under treatment in hospital and can rejoin their comrades on the front lines. Their experiences and the moral, mental, and physical hurdles they must overcome are central to the story.

Production

The series was developed chiefly by Tom Hanks and Erik Jendresen, who spent months detailing the plot outline and individual episodes. Steven Spielberg served as "the final eye" and used Saving Private Ryan, the film which he and Hanks had collaborated on, to inform the series. Accounts of Easy Company veterans such as Donald Malarkey were incorporated into production to add historic detail.

Budget and promotion

Band of Brothers was the most expensive television miniseries made by HBO or any other television network when it was created. This record was superseded by the series' 2010 sister show, The Pacific. The budget for Band of Brothers was approximately $125 million, which comes to an average of $12.5 million per episode. An additional $15 million was allocated for the promotional campaign, which included hosting screenings for World War II veterans.

One of those screenings was held at Utah Beach, Normandy, where US troops landed on June 6, 1944. On June 7, 2001, 47 Easy Company veterans were flown to Paris and then travelled by chartered train to the site, where the series premiered. Also sponsoring the miniseries was Chrysler, as its Jeeps were used to great extent in the series. Chrysler spent $5 to $15 million on its advertising campaign, based on and using footage from Band of Brothers. Each of the spots was reviewed and approved by co-executive producers Hanks and Spielberg.

The BBC paid £7 million ($10.1 million) as co-production partner, the most it had ever paid for a bought-in program, and screened it on BBC Two. Originally, it was to have aired on BBC One, but was moved to allow an "uninterrupted 10-week run" with a denial that the move was because the series was not mainstream enough. Negotiations were monitored by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who personally spoke to co-executive producer Spielberg.

Location

The series was shot over 8 to 10 months at Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, England. Various sets, including replicas of European towns, were built there. This location had also been used to shoot the film Saving Private Ryan. Replicas were constructed on the large open field to represent twelve different towns, including Bastogne, Belgium; Eindhoven, Netherlands; and Carentan, France. North Weald Airfield in Essex was also used for location shots depicting the take-off sequences before the D-Day Normandy landings.

The village of Hambleden, in Buckinghamshire, England, was used as a location extensively in the early episodes to depict the site of the company's training in England, as well as in later scenes. The scenes set in Germany and Austria were shot in Switzerland, in and near the village of Brienz in the Bernese Oberland, and at the nearby Hotel Giessbach.

Historical accuracy

To preserve historical accuracy, the various writers conducted additional research. One source was the memoir of Easy Company soldier David Kenyon Webster. Written after the war from the diary he kept, his memoir Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich was published by LSU Press in 1994, following renewed interest in World War II and almost 40 years after Webster's death in a boating accident. (Ambrose had quoted liberally from Webster's then-unpublished diary entries, with permission of his estate, in his 1992 book.)

The production team consulted with Dale Dye, a retired Marine Captain and consultant on Saving Private Ryan, as well as most of the surviving Easy Company veterans at the time, such as Richard Winters, Bill Guarnere, Frank Perconte, Ed Heffron, and Amos Taylor. Dye (who plays the role of Colonel Robert Sink) instructed the actors portraying soldiers in a 10-day boot camp.

The production worked for accuracy in details of weapons and costumes. Simon Atherton, the weapons master, corresponded with veterans to match weapons to scenes, and assistant costume designer Joe Hobbs extensively used photos and veteran accounts.

Most actors had contact before filming with the individuals they were to portray, often by telephone. Several of the veterans came to the production site. Hanks acknowledged alterations were needed to create the series: "We've made history fit onto our screens. We had to condense down a vast number of characters, fold other people's experiences into 10 or 15 people, have people saying and doing things others said or did. We had people take off their helmets to identify them, when they would never have done so in combat. But I still think it is three or four times more accurate than most films like this." As a final accuracy check, the veterans saw previews of the series and approved the episodes before they were aired.

Liberation of one of the Kaufering subcamps of Dachau was depicted in Episode 9 "Why We Fight", however, the 101st Airborne Division arrived at Kaufering Lager IV subcamp on the day after it was discovered by the 134th Ordinance Maintenance Battalion of the 12th Armored Division on 27 April 1945.

It is uncertain which Allied military unit was the first to reach the Kehlsteinhaus; several claim the honor. The matter is compounded by popular confusion of it and the town of Berchtesgaden taken on May 4 by forward elements of the 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division of XV Corps of the U.S. Seventh Army of the Sixth Army Group.

Reputedly members of the 7th went as far as the elevator to the Kehlsteinhaus, with at least one individual claiming he and a partner continued on to the top.

However, the 101st Airborne maintains it was first both to Berchtesgaden and the Kehlsteinhaus. Also, elements of the French 2nd Armored Division, Laurent Touyeras, Georges Buis and Paul Répiton-Préneuf, were present on the night of May 4 to 5, and took several photographs before leaving on May 10 at the request of US command. and so says the numerous testimonies the Spanish soldiers who went along with them.

Cast and characters

Since Band of Brothers focuses entirely on the exploits of "E" (Easy) Company during World War II, the series features a large ensemble cast.

Appearing in all ten episodes:

Appearing in nine episodes:

Appearing in eight episodes:

Appearing in seven episodes or fewer:

Critical reception

Band of Brothers received critical acclaim, mixed with doubts about the handling of individual characters.

CNN's Paul Clinton said that the miniseries "is a remarkable testament to that generation of citizen soldiers, who responded when called upon to save the world for democracy and then quietly returned to build the nation that we now all enjoy, and all too often take for granted."

Caryn James of The New York Times called it "an extraordinary 10-part series that masters its greatest challenge: it balances the ideal of heroism with the violence and terror of battle, reflecting what is both civilized and savage about war." James also remarked on the generation gap between most viewers and characters, suggesting this was a significant hurdle.

Robert Bianco of USA Today wrote that the series was "significantly flawed and yet absolutely extraordinary—just like the men it portrays," rating the series four out of four stars. He noted however that it was hard to identify with individual characters during crowded battle scenes.

Tom Shales of The Washington Post wrote that though the series is "at times visually astonishing," it suffers from "disorganization, muddled thinking and a sense of redundancy." Shales observed that the characters are hard to identify: "Few of the characters stand out strikingly against the backdrop of the war. In fact, this show is all backdrop and no frontdrop. When you watch two hours and still aren't quite sure who the main characters are, something is wrong."

Philip French of The Guardian commented that he had "seen nothing in the cinema this past year that impressed me as much as BBC2's 10-part Band of Brothers, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and Ken Loach's The Navigators on Channel 4", and that it was "one of the best films ever made about men in war and superior in most ways to Saving Private Ryan." Matt Seaton, also in The Guardian, wrote that the film's production was "on such a scale that in an ad hoc, inadvertent way it gives one a powerful sense of what really was accomplished during the D-Day invasion - the extraordinary logistical effort of moving men and matériel in vast quantities."

Band of Brothers has become a kind of benchmark for World War II series. The German series Generation War, for example, was characterized by critics as Band of Brüder ("Brüder" being the German word for "Brothers").

As of December 2016, Band of Brothers is the second highest-ranking television series on the Internet Movie Database, with an average rating of 9.5/10.

Ratings

The premiere of Band of Brothers on September 9, 2001, drew 10 million viewers. Two days later, the September 11 attacks occurred, and HBO immediately ceased its marketing campaign. The second episode drew 7.2 million viewers. The last episode of the miniseries received 5.1 million viewers, the smallest audience.

Accolades

The series was nominated for twenty Primetime Emmy Awards, and won seven, including Outstanding Miniseries and Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie, or Dramatic Special. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, American Film Institute Award for TV Movie or Miniseries of the Year, Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television, and the TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries, and Specials,. The show was also selected for a Peabody Award for '...relying on both history and memory to create a new tribute to those who fought to preserve liberty.'

Home video releases

All ten parts of the miniseries were released in a DVD box set on November 5, 2002. The set includes five discs containing all the episodes, and a bonus disc with the behind-the-scenes documentary We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company and the video diary of actor Ron Livingston, who played Lewis Nixon. A collector's edition of the box set was also released, containing the same discs but held in a tin case. Band of Brothers is one of the best-selling TV DVD sets of all time, having sold about $250 million worth.

The series was released as an exclusive HD DVD TV series in Japan in 2007. With the demise of the format, they are currently out of production. A Blu-ray Disc version of Band of Brothers was released on November 11, 2008 and has become a Blu-ray Disc top seller.