Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Masters Of The Air’ On Apple TV+, Where Austin Butler Headlines A ‘Band Of Brothers’ Sequel About Army Air Force Bombers In WWII

In 2001, Band Of Brothers premiered on HBO, showing a realistic view of World War II from the perspective of the soldiers that fought it. But the memorable characters and the stories that were written for them were what stuck with viewers. Since then, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have produced have mined the Great War for two more epic miniseries. The latest follows a B17 bomber group as they went on dangerous missions over Germany from 1943 until the end of the war.

MASTERS OF THE AIR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a bar, two Army Air Force officers slam down shot glasses and ask for another. One looks at two officers and calls one a “lucky bastard” because he’s being deployed to Europe.

The Gist: The officers being deployed are Major Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler) and Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner). They are with the 100th Bomb Group, part of the Army’s Eighth Air Force. who will be stationed in England. Egan is going out first, to establish his job as the air executive, managing missions and debriefing crews when they get back.

In the interim, before Cleven and the rest of the group ship out, Egan volunteers to go out on missions with the 389th to get an idea of what the 100th is going to face. We see him on a mission over Germany in the spring of 1943, with his B-17 and the others getting pelted by German shell fire from the ground and hounded by fighters in the air. He helps his flight’s gunner survive after he gets shot by German fighters.

Cleven and the rest of the 100th arrives in Greenland, where Cleven hears about his buddy Egan’s antics. They don’t stay long, as they have to move on to England. One problem: The group’s navigator, Lt. Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle), is so wracked with airsickness he inadvertently sends the group over France, where they’re immediately greeted by flak from German guns. Also, they’ve gotten separated in the clouds and their landing gear won’t deploy, forcing them to do a belly landing.

Egan appeals to the group’s CO, Col. Harold Huglin (Nikolai Kinski) to get him out from behind his desk so he can go up with the rest of the group, but Col. Huglin, who seems to be wracked with ulcers, tells him that the group is already being eyeballed by higher ups for their performance, and everyone should fulfill the assignments they were given.

The group is sent on a massive bombing mission over Germany, and Col. Huglin goes up with them to command. One of the planes has mechanical difficulties and has to go back. The rest are subjected to heavy fire from German forces on the ground and in the air, and can’t even drop their payload because fog and clouds are obscuring the target. They lose a number of bombers and almost 30 officers in the process, adding to their reputation as the “Bloody Hundredth.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Masters Of The Air, based on a book by Donald L. Miller, was produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions, and it’s more or less a sequel to Band Of Brothers and The Pacific. John Shiban and John Orloff created the series, and Cary Joji Fukunaga directed the first episode. Gary Goetzman is also an executive producer.

Our Take: Let’s get this out of the way: Masters Of The Air looks spectacular. Shiban, Orloff, and directors like Fukunaga have done a masterful job of bringing viewers into the world of the crews who managed the “flying fortress” B17s in World War II.

The visual effects during the mission scenes give viewers a realistic view of just what these bomber crews faced during firefights. Remember, they’re not in nimble fighter planes; they’re in bombers that are fortified by machine guns but tend to be sitting ducks once the flak starts flying. They either have to power through to complete their mission and hope for fighter support or they turn back; in either case, a well-placed shot can bring the whole bomber down.

The problem is, besides Butler and Turner’s characters, we couldn’t even tell you much about any of the other characters. For instance, we know that Barry Keoghan is part of the cast, and we think we saw him in one or two scenes, but we’d be hard pressed to tell you exactly what he did in the first episode (he plays Lt. Curtis Biddick, who has a Bowery Boys-esque New Yawk accent). We’re not given a ton of time to get to know the officers from the 100th before they’re sent on their first mission. We don’t see them in training, or doing much interacting with each other in Greenland or England.

Once we get into combat, we were thoroughly confused which plane which people were on. Was the plane with the CO the one that had problems? Was Cleven on one of the planes that got shot? Which plane had the gunner who couldn’t operate his gun because it literally froze in the cold conditions? Yes, the fog of war is the fog of war, but once everyone put their oxygen masks on, we had no idea who was who or what was what.

Butler’s character Cleven is stoic and has his team in mind at all times. But he’s also pretty generic, at least in the first episode. And we know that Egan has a wild streak in him, but that rebelliousness doesn’t show itself after the first half of the episode. Could we see some more character development from them and the rest of the crew as the episodes go on? Perhaps. But for now, they all feel like stock characters from just about any World War II movie we’ve seen, and given how complex the battle scenes are and how massive the cast is, we’re not sure we’re going to see much more than that out of most of the characters.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As they drive back to the base, a shellshocked Cleven says to his friend Egan, “We have a long road ahead of us,” and Eagan replies, “Yeah.”

Sleeper Star: The visual effects team gets the nod here, because the combat scenes look so spectacular.

Most Pilot-y Line: Col. Hugin pukes up blood, and his aide asks if he should call the doctor. “I’m alright,” says the colonel. He is certainly not alright.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Masters Of The Air is one of the few shows whose visual effects are so good they may be enough to keep viewers watching. But the characters are very generic, not giving viewers anyone to latch onto to see if they survive the missions the bomber group go on.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.