Reviews

Why are all the historians providing contributions for this production shown as being academics from King's College MADRID. King's College Madrid is a co-ed British secondary school in Spain's capital. Are these sage experts real experts or merely secondary school teachers needing a little extra pocket money? Their contributions in person seem to be of little consequence and they could have be been omitted. On the other hand they may have made real contributions behind the scenes but the labeling of their academic seat of learning does tend to undermine the validity of their contribution. Or was this just editorial incompetence?

All the components that make up this production would have made a stage play where the real life performances would have enough to have made a pleasant, if somewhat dated, theatrical evening. As a film it was stilted and not immersive. As a play it could not have delivered more but since it was a film it was severely limited even with a great stage performance by Mark Rylance. The supporting cast supported him and the benefit of the streamed movie on my TV was that after the final curtain I didn't have to find a cab to go home. All the way through you feel you're watching a play being filmed. It wasn't but if you can hold that concept throughout, you can gather some pleasure from the production.

Before reviewing this production it is necessary to mention the classic drama which preceded it and upon which the producers have chosen to trade to enhance their chances of commercial success. I am of course refiring to Band of Brothers which set the standards for historical WWII drama. I am not an American but once I had watched the first episode of Band of Brothers even the theme music, which is an emotional hook, made me tear up to recognise the bravery and sacrifice of American boys, far from home, fighting in a war that they might have well considered not relevant to them and taking a place in history helping to save Europe and the world. OK that's heavy stuff but Masters of the Air chooses to compare itself to Band of Brothers and so has to be judged on that basis.

Firstly the producers failed completely to establish any real feelings in their characters. They are stock two dimensional US movie heroes with no depth or emotional reality. The truth is that no drama, no matter how much is spent on locations, effects, capable actors and accomplished cinematography can gel if it doesn't have a high grade of writing. It is in the lamentable scripting that this drama fails and no amount of excess budget can rescue it. The writing needs to define and display the nature of the characters. It needs to be accurate in historical detail if the drama is a historical drama. It needs to give the audience an understanding of the story it tells and to weld all these aspect together to create a world into which the audience can be drawn and of which they can feel a part. Masters of the Air fails on all these counts and seems like a series of hour long trailers for a comic book.

The writers have no shame about regurgitating outdated Hollywood tropes regarding history. The embarrassing themes undermine the credibility of the drama. The American aircrew are all confidant womanisers, the women are all a collection of pin up starlets, the animosities between nationalities are offensive. Being Irish is close to being a hero without getting out of bed. The English are weak snobbish foolish adversaries rather than allies and for some reason the producers want to believe that all Scots hate the English and love Americans.

The historical background to the day and night bombing campaigns by the USAAF and the RAF are couched in terms which rate the US daylight offensive as inspired, humane and affective while the night bombing by the RAF is portrayed as cowardly, ineffective and lacking a moral purpose. The truth is that in the period covered by this drama, neither were effective and both fell way below the intentions of their planners. What is true is that the high rate of casualties incurred in both campaigns was appalling and the kids who manned the bombers were sent back again and again until they were shot down with the most appalling casualty rate. This applied to the "heroic" Americans and the "cowardly" British and Empire crews. Not all RAF crews were English, a high proportion of aircrew were Australian and Canadian and they were not all officers in dress uniforms. Of course it is highly distasteful that the writers, directors and producers insist on maintaining this offensive and slanderous view of allies who had nothing but respect for each other and sacrificed their lives in very similar manners.

If a drama chooses to set itself in a historical context it cannot avoid criticism if it fails to deliver the realities of the history it choses to portray. The entire US European daylight bombing campaign was based on two criminally ill considered principles. Firstly that the Norden bomb-sight worked, which it never really did despite costs approaching the levels of the atomic bomb programme to develop it and secondly, the belief that large relatively slow and unmanoeuvrable bombers could defend themselves against German opposition by cramming them with crew and machine guns. They could not. So the USAAF ended up area bombing by inability while the RAF just admitted the truth and gave up precision bombing except in a few notable cases.

Masters of the Air glosses over all this but still chooses to utilise the danger of daylight bombing for it's ability to remove large numbers of unknown characters while leaving the heroes to sail through in time to pick up the best of the bunch of pin ups back in the bar where they methodically alienate their British hosts. That is except for children who for some reason are allowed to wander around a wartime operational airbase as if it were a theme park, which in this drama it surely is.

The CGI of the air warfare is what this production sells as its main attribute and if the rest of the production was acceptable it would be adequate but alone it isn't enough to save this quaint US xenophobic self congratulatory drivel especially since they chose to compare it with Band of Brothers which delivered most of what it needed to. Masters of the Air does not. Even its title is pretentious in the way that comic book movies adopt such status in their titles to compensate for the fact that they are merely fantasy.

This review is already much too long and so many more detailed criticisms will have to be omitted. If you insist on watching it, look for the real B17s and recognise that they are the only reallity in the whole sad mess.

Hokum but I enjoyed it all except the WWII London police car sirens which weren't fitted until 1963 when they also introduced the blue flashing beacons. They just had bells but like all science fiction fans I do tend to be obsessively pedantic. I was prepared to accept all the other minor errors but those police car bells are a sound of those times which transport me back in time which the film makers missed. I suspect that those not liking science fiction will find the plot difficult to follow and the continual time shifts confusing but the production isn't made for non science fiction fans so if this isn't your style, don't bother struggling with the plot. :-)

Virtually all the citicisms of this film are justified so I'll point out one that is missed by all the reviewers and saddened me. The main character, Montegue, is credited with having a Jewish wife who he sends out of the country for safety. True, but what the film delberately fails to mention is that the real Montigue was very much a jew, fighting his war the best way he could to defeat Hitler who would see him and the rest of the jewish community in the UK gassed and burnt. Why fluff the fact and leave the audience to assume that he isn't jewish, but merely has a jewish wife? Not accidental and leaves a bad taste. Apparenly real jewish heroes cannot be allowed to be film heroes in British films. Sad.

The victim is found holding a revolver. The detectives when speaking of the gun say that it had a half empty magazine. Revolvers load rimmed cartridges and do not have magazines which take rimless ammunition. When searching the victims house they find a box of rimless cartridges although the victim's gun was a revolver. To cap it all later in the episode the father of another victim seeking revenge goes to his attic and takes out of hiding his pistol, which is actually the same revolver seen in the hands of the other victim earlier in the episode. I can only think they shot the first scene with a semi automatic pistol, had to reshoot it and had lost access to the original gun and used the revolver they had used in the later scene because it was the only weapon available to them at the time.

Otherwise it's an interesting detective story for people who don't understand guns.

And the scar on the heroine's forehead moves from side to side from episode to episode!

Reviewers criticising the brightly lit "sitcom" sequences have missed the entire purpose of the show and their use in it. It is not a comedy show and anyone who thought that it was cannot have sat through 8 episodes without wondering why the sitcom wasn't funny and the drama had no laughs in it at all. And if they didn't, they should have given up watching the show during the first episode because it wasn't made with them in mind.

In some respects the sitcom sequences are more heartbreaking than the drama sequences as they illustrate how ethical principles can be negated and the strongest moral case be swept away by crass intolerance. They do this far more effectively than merely showing how the abhorrent husband abuses his trapped wife in a straightforward drama presentation. You either like this theatrical mechanism or you don't but you should not confuse it with a show where half the scenes are "funny" and half the scenes are "serious".

Annie Murphy is a superb actress but it is hard on Eric Petersen playing Kevin as he has to convey his character through the sitcom part of the presentation without the chance to further explore who he is in the dramatic part in which he doesn't appear.

Overall the show stands or falls on the use of the sitcom/drama mechanism and while I liked the concept and therefore enjoyed the show, there will be others who, while realising that the sitcom isn't really a sitcom, still don't like the format of the show and that would make it hard for them to enjoy it. For people who like sitcoms, don't watch this show, it isn't intended for you!

I rate the show 10/10 for the acting, the camera work, the direction and the concept but also for the courage to tie a production irrevocably to this chosen format.

Big budget, great sets and effects creating a realiostic period backdrop for a good cast of actors and the writer produced a sadisti8c comic book view of a serous period in history full of self righteousness and bad story telling. There cannot be many sections of society that are not offended by some aspect of this drivel. Misogynistic, patronising, prejudiced against holocaust survivors and without any feeling for real human beings. The concentration camp scenes were cringe-worthy. I made it to episode 4 but I couldn't take any more. What a waste of resources. The 3 stars are only because of the production skills. The writing had no skill.

Badly written and badly acted. Saddest thing was to see Thierry Goddard from Engrenages, the best, in this, the worst.

Listen out for the theme tune "Heroes" by Ramon Balcazar written for the US war documentary "Secrets of War" in Episode 15. Hope he got a royalty but I doubt it.

For what plot there was the entire thing could have played for just 3 of the 8 dreary episodes I forced myself to watch in the forlorn hope that it might improve. It didn't and I may never watch another Norwegian production if this what these guys think drama is. No wonder the leading man didn't want his picture shown on this website.

This rubbish didn't get made without someone senior in Netflix wanting to make his political points at the expense of the truth. The problem with PC is that it dresses itself in righteousness to obscure its lack of reason. The themes in this drama are worthy of consideration in the light of historical truth and by diminishing the magnitude of the struggle, the cause is similarly diminished, the lies undermine the believability of the truth and dramatic art is sacrificed on the alter of political manipulation. Whoever it was in Netflix that signed off on this one should be ashamed but I suspect they did more than sign off on it. They commissioned it for reasons which have little to do with dramatic art which in the end is the real loser here. One that everyone involved in making it will want us all to forget. I think we will all be able to do that!

The storyline, the writing, the acting, the direction, the camera work and the locations all contribute to a worryingly explicit revelation of Iraq after the gung ho went home. I can even forgive the strange subtitle and dubbing decisions where the Iraqi characters speak English to their occupiers and Arabic to casual Iraqi contacts but speak English with Iraqi accents to each other in their homes even though you can see that the lip synchs is Arabic. I sense this is for the US market which is in total keeping with the message that the story tells about ineptitude and hubris in an occupation which failed as comprehensively as the military triumphed in the war which preceded it. Irritating in such a realistic drama but I can forgive even that because the production is so good.