Masters of the Air

This Apple TV+ miniseries created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks completes a WWII trio from the two, which started back in 2001 with Band of Brothers and The Pacific (2010). Masters of the Air is a good old-fashioned war drama with cutting-edge visual effects and dazzling young actors (Austin Butler and Callum Turner), who play best friends and members of the 8th Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group, a close-knit brotherhood of B-17 fliers. While the story is based on real-life characters and history — the group earned the nickname “The Bloody 100th” for the amount of loss it suffered — it’s a combo of the immersive in-air action and relationship between Butler and Turner’s characters, Buck and Bucky, that keep you dialed in.

Perhaps more important than the film’s impressive visual effects, rich historical detail and character-driven themes, is the film’s (and characters’) ability to reckon with the human cost of war.

For fans of Band of Brothers, the historical accuracy and attention to detail is noteworthy. But while Band of Brothers relied on first-person interviews with members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, the surviving men of the Bloody Hundredth had all passed. Thankfully, historian Donald L. Miller, who wrote the 2007 bestselling book of the same name, had interviewed them all.