Plot
''Band of Brothers'' is a dramatized account of E Company, 506th Infantry Regiment (United States), "Easy Company" (part of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment (United States), 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment), assigned to the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division during World War II. Over ten episodes the series details the company's exploits during the war. Starting with jump training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, ''Band of Brothers'' follows the unit through the American airborne landings in Normandy, Operation Market Garden, the Siege of Bastogne, the invasion of Germany, including the liberation of a Kaufering concentration camp complex, concentration camp, and on to the war's end. It includes the taking of the ''Kehlsteinhaus'' (Eagle's Nest) at Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden and refers to the surrender of Japan. Major (United States), Major Richard Winters (1918–2011) is the central character, shown working to accomplish the company's 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 action. As the series is based on historic events, the fates of the characters reflect those of the persons on which they are based. Many either die or sustain serious wounds which lead to them being sent home. Other soldiers recover after treatment in field hospitals and rejoin their units on the front line. Their experiences, and the moral, mental, and physical hurdles they must overcome, are central to the story's narrative.Episodes
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.Main cast
* Kirk Acevedo as Staff Sergeant Joe Toye * Eion Bailey as United States Army enlisted rank insignia of World War II, Private First Class David Kenyon Webster * Michael Cudlitz as Staff Sergeant Denver "Bull" Randleman * Dale Dye as Colonel Robert Sink * Rick Gomez as Technician Fourth Grade George Luz * Scott Grimes as Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey * Frank John Hughes as Staff Sergeant William Guarnere, William "Wild Bill" Guarnere * Damian Lewis as Major Richard Winters, Richard "Dick" Winters * Ron Livingston as Captain Lewis Nixon III, Lewis Nixon * James Madio as Technician Fourth Grade Frank Perconte * Neal McDonough as First Lieutenant Lynn Compton, Lynn "Buck" Compton * Rene L. Moreno as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Ramirez * David Schwimmer as Captain Herbert Sobel * Richard Speight, Jr. as Sergeant Warren "Skip" Muck * Donnie Wahlberg as Second Lieutenant Carwood Lipton * Matthew Settle as Captain Ronald Speirs * Douglas Spain as Technician Fifth Grade Antonio C. Garcia * Rick Warden as First Lieutenant Harry Welsh * Marc Warren as Private Albert Blithe * Shane Taylor (actor), Shane Taylor as Technician Fourth Grade Eugene "Doc" Roe * Dexter Fletcher as Staff Sergeant John "Johnny" Martin * Colin Hanks as First Lieutenant Henry S. Jones * Ross McCall as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph LiebgottRecurring cast
* Matthew Leitch as Staff Sergeant Floyd Talbert * Peter Youngblood Hills as Staff Sergeant Darrell Powers, Darrell "Shifty" Powers * Nicholas Aaron as Private First Class Robert Wynn (soldier), Robert "Popeye" Wynn * Philip Barantini as Private Wayne A. "Skinny" Sisk * Doug Allen (actor), Doug Allen as Private Alton More * George Calil as Sergeant James "Moe" Alley Jr. * Nolan Hemmings as Staff Sergeant Chuck Grant * Robin Laing as Private First Class Edward Heffron, Edward "Babe" Heffron * Michael Fassbender as Technical sergeant, Technical Sergeant Burton Christenson * Tim Matthews (actor), Tim Matthews as Private First Class Alex Penkala * Craig Heaney as Private Roy W. Cobb * Peter McCabe as Corporal Donald Hoobler * Jamie Bamber as Second Lieutenant Jack E. Foley * Ben Caplan as Corporal Walter Gordon (veteran), Walter 'Smokey' Gordon * Mark Huberman as Private Lester A. Hashey * Phil McKee as Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Strayer * Mark Lawrence (actor), Mark Lawrence as Corporal William Dukeman * Rocky Marshall as Staff Sergeant Earl McClungMinor
* David Andrews (actor), David Andrews as General Elbridge G. Chapman * Bill Armstrong as General Anthony McAuliffe * Jonie Broom as Hans Schmidt * Doug Cockle as Father John Maloney * Alexis Conran as George Lavenson * Dominic Cooper as Allington * Marcos D'Cruze as Joseph P. Domingus * Tony Devlin as Ralph R. "Doc" Spina * Jimmy Fallon as Lt. George C. Rice * Simon Fenton as Gerald J. Lorraine * Iain Fletcher as Bernard J. "Doc" Ryan * Tom George as Private White * Ezra Godden as Robert van Klinken * Stephen Graham (actor), Stephen Graham as Sgt. Myron "Mike" Ranney * Luke Griffin as Terrence C. "Salty" Harris * Tom Hardy as Private John Janovec * Matt Hickey as Private Patrick O'Keefe * Andrew Howard as Captain Clarence Hester * Nigel Hoyle as Staff Sergeant Leo Boyle * Lucie Jeanne as Renée Lemaire * Corey Johnson (actor), Corey Johnson as Major Louis Kent * Marc Ryan-Jordan as John T. Julian * Wolf Kahler as German General * John Light (actor), John Light as Lieutenant Colonel O. Dobie * Joseph May as Edward Shames, Edward J. Shames * James McAvoy as Pvt. James W. Miller * Stephen McCole as Frederick Heyliger, Frederick T. "Moose" Heyliger * Hugo Metsers as John van Kooijk * Benjamin Montague as Private Matt McDowell * Hans Georg Nenning as German Baker * David Nicolle as First Lieutenant Thomas Peacock * Kieran O'Brien as Private Allen Vest * Rebecca Okot as Anna the Nurse * Jason O'Mara as First Lieutenant Thomas Meehan III * Peter O'Meara as First Lieutenant Norman Dike * Oscar Pearce as Richard H. Hughes * Simon Pegg as First Sergeant William S. Evans * Ben Peyton as Warrant Officer Hill * Andrew-Lee Potts, Andrew Lee Potts as Eugene E. Jackson * Dave Power as Rudolph R. Dittrich * Luke Roberts (actor), Luke Roberts as Herbert J. Suerth * Iain Robertson as George Smith * Toby Ross Bryant as Medic Paul Jones * Bart Ruspoli as Private Edward Tipper * Alex Sagba as Francis J. Mellet * Simon Schatzberger as Private First Class Joseph Lesniewski * Andrew Scott (actor), Andrew Scott as Private John "Cowboy" Hall * Graham Seed as Brigadier General Red Beret * Adam Sims as John S. Zielinski, Jr. * Anatole Taubman as Otto Herzfeld * Stephen Walters as Technician Fifth Grade John "Jack" McGrath, Sr. * Paul Williams as Private Jack Olsen * Jonathan Young as Lieutenant John W. KelleyProduction
The series was developed chiefly by Tom Hanks and Erik Jendresen, who spent months detailing the plot outline and individual episodes.Budget and promotion
''Band of Brothers'' was at the time the most expensive TV miniseries to have been made by any network. Its budget was about $125 million, or an average of $12.5 million per episode. An additional $15 million was allocated for a promotional campaign, which included screenings for World War II veterans. 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. Also sponsoring was Chrysler, as its Jeeps were used in the series. Chrysler spent $5 million to $15 million on its advertising campaign, using footage from ''Band of Brothers''. Each of the spots was reviewed and approved by the 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 ten-week run", with the BBC denying that this was because the series was not sufficiently mainstream. Negotiations were monitored by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who spoke personally to Spielberg.Location
The series was shot over eight to ten months on Ellenbrooke Fields, at Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, England. Various sets, including replicas of European towns, were built. 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, among them 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 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 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. 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 Easy Company veterans, including Richard Winters, Bill Guarnere, Frank Perconte, Ed Heffron, and Amos Taylor. Dye (who portrays Colonel Robert Sink) instructed the actors in a 10-day Recruit training, boot camp. 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. Most actors had contact with the individuals they were to portray before filming, often by telephone. Several veterans came to the production site. 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." As a final accuracy check, the veterans saw previews of the series and approved the episodes before they were aired. 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." file:506 Inf Rgt DUI.jpg, left, 150px, 506th PIR Unit emblem Liberation of one of the Kaufering concentration camp, Kaufering subcamps of Dachau concentration camp, Dachau was depicted in episode 9 ("Why We Fight (Band of Brothers), Why We Fight"); however, the 101st Airborne Division arrived at Kaufering Lager IV subcamp on the day after it was discovered by the 134th Ordnance Maintenance Battalion of the 12th Armored Division (United States), 12th Armored Division, on April 27, 1945. 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. 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 (United States), 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division (United States), 3rd Infantry Division. 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 Division, 101st Airborne maintains it was first both to Berchtesgaden and the Kehlsteinhaus. Also, elements of the 2nd Armored Division (France), 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 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."Reception
Critical reception
''Band of Brothers'' has a 97% approval rating with an average score of 8.80/10 based on 32 reviews from Rotten Tomatoes. The website's critics consensus is, "''Band of Brothers'' offers a visceral, intense look at the horrors of war – and the sacrifices of the millions of ordinary people who served." While on Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the miniseries received a score of 87 out of 100, based on 28 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim." 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. 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." 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." ''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").Ratings
''Band of Brothers'' September 9, 2001 premiere drew 10 million viewers. Two days later, the September 11 attacks occurred, and HBO immediately ceased its marketing campaign. Hence, while the second episode drew 7.2 million viewers, the last episode received 5.1 million viewers, the smallest audience.Awards and nominations
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, 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.' 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".Primetime Emmy Awards
Golden Globe Awards
Home media
The miniseries was released on VHS and DVD box sets on November 5, 2002. The DVD set has five discs containing all ten 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 III, Lewis Nixon. A collector's edition of the box set was also released, containing the same discs in a tin case instead of cardboard. , ''Band of Brothers'' was one of the best-selling TV DVD sets, 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 went 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.See also
* ''The Pacific (miniseries), The Pacific'' * ''Masters of the Air'' * ''Battleground (film), Battleground'', a 1949 film that followed a company of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division during the siege of Bastogne.Notes
References
;Bibliography *Further reading
A number of books give further insight into Easy Company: * Part travelogue, part historical perspective. * Profiles of deceased Easy Company men by their family members. * * Oral history featuring 20 surviving members of Easy Company. * Recounts Compton's career as an attorney and prosecutor of Sirhan Sirhan. * * * * A limited edition coffee table book. * Published posthumously. * A collection of Guth's war time pictures and memoirs. *External links
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