This HBO's war masterpiece outflanked Band of Brothers

Let’s be honest: trying to say there’s a war series better than Band of Brothers is a bit like shouting at the Queen for wearing a hat. Not done, generally frowned upon. Still, it’s sometimes worth shaking things up, so here goes: I reckon Spielberg and Hanks’ The Pacific is actually the stronger series – and I’ve got my reasons.

The Usual Gold Standard – and the Challenger

Everyone (rightly) bangs on about Band of Brothers: Emmy winner, a key show that helped kick off the TV 'Golden Age', big production values, a ridiculously good cast. It takes Ambrose’s true-life book and creates a drama about Easy Company, the American paratroopers who fought across Europe. The series is so iconic, it’s basically compulsory viewing for any war drama fan.

But The Pacific, also an Emmy winner, is no slouch. It’s just that fewer people rave about it, possibly because the cast list wasn’t exactly packed with A-listers in 2010 (Rami Malek, for one, was years away from his robot phase). If Spielberg had managed to rope in someone along the lines of Matt Damon or Brad Pitt, The Pacific might already have legendary status. Don't let the star power put you off — there's plenty here worth your time.

Diving Deeper: What Sets The Pacific Apart?

So what’s different about The Pacific? Well, Band of Brothers is definitely gripping, but most of its characters feel like blokes you’d want on your pub quiz special ops team — all cool under fire, a bit untouchable. The real heart of that series, though, is the war itself: Normandy, Bastogne, the big history-making moments.

The Pacific takes a different tack. The entire focus shifts to the US Marines in the Pacific Theatre, fighting the Japanese in some of the harshest conditions you’ll ever see onscreen. More importantly, it homes in on just three main characters (Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge, and John Basilone), allowing for far more time exploring what this all does to them as actual people, not just uniforms in muddy foxholes.

Brutal Honesty, Not Hollywood Glitz

• Characters are genuinely flawed: There’s no worship here. They mess up, lose faith, do things they regret.
• Home front matters: We see families left behind, wives worrying, men who dodged service dealing with guilt.
• Aftermath is front and centre: Instead of a passing mention about what the paratroopers did post-war, The Pacific shows it. One bloke, Leckie, goes off to become a journalist – battle-scarred but building a new life. For Sledge, it’s bleak: he’s haunted by PTSD but can’t let go of his time in uniform.
• Not just about shooting: Yeah, plenty of combat scenes, but there’s real attention to what it’s like coming home – and what the war takes from you.

Why Spielberg Changed Course

Spielberg made Band of Brothers a bit like a TV cousin to Saving Private Ryan: loads of historical detail, big set-pieces, less about the blokes beneath the helmets. The Pacific was different from the start – it happened because loads of veterans wrote to him after Band of Brothers aired. Their stories, mostly from the Islands campaign, had been brushed off for decades compared to D-Day and the Blitzkrieg stuff.

"We got so much positive mail. At the same time, that mail said, 'I was a veteran of the Solomons.' 'I fought on Tarawa.' 'I was at Midway.' We got so many letters of veterans from the Pacific Theater of Operations, asking us if we could acquit their stories the way we acquitted the stories of the European Theater of Operations."

That’s Spielberg in his own words, explaining why the second miniseries digs so hard into the Marine Corps angle. He wanted to do right by the men whose battles didn’t get the Hollywood, blockbuster treatment. It worked: even the official US Marine Corps site tips its hat to the show, with ex-servicemen calling the combat scenes the most accurate they’d ever seen. According to Raymond M. Owen, Sr., who copped a Purple Heart in Korea: "It was the best military combat scenes I’ve ever seen." Herb Franck, a retired Navy Commander who survived Pearl Harbor, said: "For the first time on a screen, they’ve shown how combat really was."