Masters of the Air review: A landmark TV spectacle

Masters of the Air isn’t just the most ambitious spectacle put to the small screen: it’s an overwhelmingly moving ode to the brothers of the skies, and another landmark in television.

Wilfred Owen captured the viscera of trench warfare; the trudge and sludge, the froth-corrupted lungs of men submerged in a cloud of pure death, the floundering of souls doomed to bodies rotting outside in. What would he observe of the Second Great War’s aerial mayhem? Perhaps sights of battered planes drifting like corpses through water, hands de-palmed from the icy clutches of gunmetal, faces absolved of any sense of self in a hail of mutilation.

Masters of the Air, the magnificent Air Force successor to Band of Brothers and The Pacific from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, doesn’t shy away from those horrors. Death doesn’t orbit these men: they are in the orbit of death, always, whether they’re forced to bail miles-high only to get cut in half by a renegade wing, abandoning a weeping soldier trapped in a ball turret as their plane hurtles to the ground, or wandering wide-eyed and broken through the mists of man’s most inhumane atrocities.

It’s some of the most staggeringly unflinching war imagery since Saving Private Ryan’s Omaha landing. But, remarkably, in chronicling the grave and graphic contradiction of boys ardent for desperate glory, the series still finds a heart-plucking through line: the bravery of friends who always believed they’d beat the odds – until they didn’t.

Masters of the Air is a marriage of television and cinema

Like its HBO predecessors, Masters of the Air is an ensemble piece led by four key characters: Buck (Austin Butler) and Bucky (Callum Turner), two majors who take to the skies in the early ’40s as part of the 100th Bomb Group, a notoriously fatal assignment; Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle), an airsick navigator who spews his ring every mission; and Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal (Nate Mann), a ‘replacement’ Top Gun-level captain whose piloting skills remain the stuff of legend.

Its narrative structure is more straightforward than Band of Brothers, which framed its storytelling as glimpses into the traumatic memories of its real-life, talking-head subjects (admittedly, nothing could ever rival its devastating who’s-who reveal at the end). But while BoB still fundamentally felt like a TV series, this – in its forensic production value, chest-quaking sound design, Amblin sheen, and, crucially, the un-episodic rhythm – wouldn’t be out of place on the biggest IMAX screen you could find as one mammoth nine-hour motion picture event.

That’s not to say its segmented nature is a drawback: every chapter is just as powerful as the last, each having something to say about the men’s perception of war – “The longer you do it, the more it screws a man up,” one says. Even the hardest-hearted action junkie will need a breather, too: the action sequences are remarkably immersive with dread as the constant precursor; Emmerichian skyscapes filled to an unimaginable degree, tides of fighter planes creating seat-sinking smoke streams like The Perfect Storm’s wave, and inevitable kills that cut through the excitement with raw, hellish terror.

That violence is an appeal, but Masters of the Air doesn’t glorify war. These men always reckon with their orders – in one mission, Buck barely makes it home alive without dropping “one damn bomb” – just as the series wrestles with the wanton philosophy of the 100th’s callous dispatching of men destined for death.

Masters of the Air is a mega-watt movie star showcase

Apple TV+

Hollywood may have forgotten how to cultivate movie stars, but Austin Butler’s purring charisma dates back to an extinct breed of talent; like Paul Newman, with a dash of innocence. One shot of him in the dazzling opening credits – sweepingly scored by Blake Neely – radiates the same energy as John Wayne’s iconic Stagecoach reload. He’s not just a pretty face, either; his can’t-look-away presence is potent on his own, but with Turner, whose character is more complex and abrasive, they make for a strong pairing. Boyle and Mann are foregrounded more in the back half, and while it’d be a lie to say they could carry the whole series like Butler and Turner, their performances are well-pitched and essential to capture the full spectrum of the unit.

Barry Keoghan also delivers (with an even wilder accent than Saltburn), but don’t be too excited for Ncuti Gatwa. This isn’t any slight on the Doctor Who star: the Tuskegee Airmen (better known as the Red Tails) are awkwardly integrated into the story at an emotional highpoint, and attempts to explore their complicated relationship with the war – “Why do you fight for a country that treats you like that?” a Nazi interrogator asks – are altogether too brief. As talented as Gatwa and his co-stars are, their characters are shuffled into the pack and struggle to make a large impression with little screen time; another whole episode dedicated to them, their heroism, and how they collided with the 100th would have given them the room to breathe.

But that’s a small quibble with a series that’s admirably concerned not just with what these men did, but how they coped. John Orloff’s writing, combined with carefully calibrated beats in every performance, is tremendously moving: men don’t hug, they shake hands even when overcome with joy at seeing someone they’d presumed dead; touchdowns are met with a hardy swig of whisky, coffee, and the expectation to shake off the shakes and get ready for the next one, all while “tiptoeing around ghosts.”

There’s levity (one survivor is so relieved to see his belongings haven’t been sent home because he had “more f**king rubbers than he could count”), but melancholy lingers around every conversation; the idea that every man’s days are numbered, but they’ll never know how soon their ticket will be punched. “I could be the last pretty face they ever see,” one woman says.

Masters of the Air review score: 5/5

Masters of the Air is big, beautiful, and horrifying; as impeccable as a tribute to the sky-faring majesty, tragedy, and heart of the Bloody Hundredth could ever be.

Masters of the Air Episodes 1 and 2 premiere on Apple TV+ on January 26.