The Pacific
The 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers, produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, was the realistic, harrowing story of a group of American soldiers fighting in the European theater in World War II. But as this followup shows, that wasn't the worst the war had to offer. The island-hopping slog across the jungles of the Pacific was a more physically disorienting and morally nebulous battle, with the human brutality, tropical disease and unforgiving terrain prefiguring the nightmares of future 20th-century conflicts like that in Vietnam. Re-creating the Allied advance with staggering sweep and searing intimacy, this ten-part miniseries makes the war at once bigger and more personal than any you're likely to have seen on a small screen.
Price: $56.99 at Amazon