Band of Brothers (miniseries)

Promotional poster for Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers was at the time the most expensive TV miniseries ever to have been made by any network,[10][11] until superseded by the series' sister show, The Pacific (2010).[12][13][14] Its budget was about $125 million, or an average of $12.5 million per episode.[9]

An additional $15 million was allocated for a promotional campaign, which included screenings for World War II veterans.[10] One was held at Utah Beach, Normandy, where U.S. troops had landed on June 6, 1944. On June 7, 2001, 47 Easy Company veterans were flown to Paris and then traveled by chartered train to the site, where the series premiered.[15][16] Also sponsoring was Chrysler, as its Jeeps were used in the series.[17] Chrysler spent $5 million to $15 million on its advertising campaign, using footage from Band of Brothers.[17] Each of the spots was reviewed and approved by the co-executive producers Hanks and Spielberg.[17]

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 ten-week run", with the BBC denying that this was because the series was not sufficiently mainstream.[18][19] Negotiations were monitored by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who spoke personally to Spielberg.[20]

The series was shot over eight to ten months at Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, England. Various sets, including replicas of European towns, were built.[16] This location had also been used to shoot the film Saving Private Ryan.[9][11] Replicas were constructed on the large open field to represent twelve different towns, among them Bastogne, Belgium; Eindhoven, Netherlands; and Carentan, France.[21] 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 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.

To preserve historical accuracy, the writers conducted additional research. One source was the memoir of Easy Company soldier David Kenyon Webster, Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich (1994). This was published by LSU Press, following renewed interest in World War II and more than 30 years after his death in a boating accident. In Band of Brothers Ambrose quoted liberally from Webster's unpublished diary entries, with permission from his estate.[3][note 1]

The production team consulted Dale Dye, a retired United States Marine Corps Captain and consultant on Saving Private Ryan, as well as with most of the surviving Company veterans, including Richard Winters, Bill Guarnere, Frank Perconte, Ed Heffron, and Amos Taylor.[9][22] Dye (who portrays Colonel Robert Sink) instructed the actors in a 10-day boot camp.[22]

The production aimed for accuracy in the detail of weapons and costumes. Simon Atherton, the weapons master, corresponded with veterans to match weapons to scenes, and assistant costume designer Joe Hobbs used photos and veteran accounts.[9]

Most actors had contact before filming with the individuals they were to portray, often by telephone. Several veterans came to the production site.[9] Hanks acknowledged that 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."[16] As a final accuracy check, the veterans saw previews of the series and approved the episodes before they were aired.[23]

Shortly after the premiere of the series, Tom Hanks asked Major Winters what he thought of Band of Brothers. The major responded, "I wish that it would have been more authentic. I was hoping for an 80 percent solution." Hanks responded, "Look, Major, this is Hollywood. At the end of the day we will be hailed as geniuses if we get this 12 percent right. We are going to shoot for 17 percent."[24]

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[25] it was discovered by the 134th Ordnance Maintenance Battalion of the 12th Armored Division, on 27 April 1945.[26][27] German historian and Holocaust researcher Anton Posset worked with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks as a consultant, providing photographs of the liberators and documentation of the survivor's reports he had collected over the years. The camp was reconstructed in England for the miniseries.[28]

It is uncertain which Allied unit was first to reach the Kehlsteinhaus; several claim the honor, compounded by confusion with the town of Berchtesgaden, which was taken on May 4 by forward elements of the 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division.[29][30][note 2] Reputedly members of the 7th went as far as the elevator to the Kehlsteinhaus,[29] with at least one individual claiming he and a partner continued on to the top.[33] However, the 101st Airborne maintains it was first both to Berchtesgaden and the Kehlsteinhaus.[34] 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,[35][36] and this is supported by testimonies of the Spanish soldiers who went along with them. Major Dick Winters, who commanded the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. 506th PIR in May 1945, stated that they entered Berchtesgaden shortly after noon on May 5. He challenged competing claims stating, "If the 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Division was first in Berchtesgaden, just where did they go? Berchtesgaden is a relatively small community. I walked into the Berchtesgaden Hof with Lieutenant Welsh and saw nobody other than some servants. Goering's Officers' Club and wine cellar certainly would have caught the attention of a French soldier from LeClerc's 2nd Armored Division, or a rifleman from the U.S. 3rd Division. I find it hard to imagine, if the 3rd Division was there first, why they left those beautiful Mercedes staff cars untouched for our men."[37]

• Damian Lewis as Major Richard "Dick" Winters, the show's main character. He leads the cast for most of the episodes and is the main subject of the second episode "Day of Days", the fifth episode "Crossroads", and the final episode, "Points". Hanks said the production needed a central character to tie the story together, and they believed that Damian Lewis was best for that role.[38]
• Ron Livingston as Captain Lewis Nixon, Major Winters' best friend and frequent confidant during the series. The ninth episode "Why We Fight" largely centers on him, dealing with his problems with alcoholism.
• Scott Grimes as Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey
• Donnie Wahlberg as Second Lieutenant Carwood Lipton. The seventh episode "The Breaking Point" features Lipton prominently and shows the importance he played in maintaining the company's morale.
• Kirk Acevedo as Staff Sergeant Joe Toye
• Michael Cudlitz as Staff Sergeant Denver "Bull" Randleman. Randleman was the subject of the fourth episode, "Replacements", which featured his escape from a German-occupied village in the Netherlands.
• Dale Dye as Colonel Robert Sink
• Rick Gomez as Technician Fourth Grade George Luz
• Frank John Hughes as Staff Sergeant William "Wild Bill" Guarnere
• James Madio as Technician Fourth Grade Frank Perconte
• Neal McDonough as First Lieutenant Lynn "Buck" Compton
• Rene L. Moreno as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Ramirez
• Matthew Settle as Captain Ronald Speirs
• Douglas Spain as Technician Fifth Grade Antonio C. Garcia
• Richard Speight, Jr. as Sergeant Warren "Skip" Muck
• Eion Bailey as Private First Class David Kenyon Webster. He is the main focus of the eighth episode "The Last Patrol" featuring his return to the company after being wounded.
• Ross McCall as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Liebgott
• Rick Warden as First Lieutenant Harry Welsh
• Marc Warren as Private Albert Blithe. The third episode "Carentan" focuses on him and his adjusting to the realities of war.
• Dexter Fletcher as Staff Sergeant John "Johnny" Martin
• Colin Hanks as First Lieutenant Henry S. Jones
• David Schwimmer as Captain Herbert Sobel. He is the main subject of the first episode "Currahee," and also appears in the later episodes "Replacements" and "Points." At the 2002 Emmy Awards ceremony, Schwimmer was seated in front of the real Dick Winters. When told of this fact, he turned around and said, "Major Winters, I hope I wasn't too hard on you in the way I played Captain Sobel." Winters replied, "I assure you, he was much worse than you ever imagined."[39]
• Shane Taylor as Technician Fourth Grade Eugene "Doc" Roe. The sixth episode "Bastogne" features Roe's experience as a medic during the siege of Bastogne.

Band of Brothers received universal critical acclaim, a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score,[50] and an 8.8 on TV.com.[51]

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."[52] 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.[53] 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.[54]

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."[55] 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."[56]

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."[57]

Band of Brothers has become a benchmark for World War II series. The German series Generation War, for example, was characterized by critics as Band of Brüder (the German word for "Brothers").[58]

Band of Brothers' September 9, 2001 premiere drew 10 million viewers.[59] Two days later, the September 11 attacks occurred, and HBO immediately ceased its marketing campaign.[59] Hence, while the second episode drew 7.2 million viewers,[59] the last episode received 5.1 million viewers, the smallest audience.[60]

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.[61] It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television,[62] American Film Institute Award for TV Movie or Miniseries of the Year,[63] Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television,[64] and the TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries, and Specials.[65] 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.'[66] In September 2019, The Guardian ranked the show 68th on its list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century, stating that it "expanded the horizons – and budgets – of prestige TV".[67]