Masters of the Air is an old-fashioned TV masterpiece

The greatest show of the “new” TV era is probably Better Call Saul. It’s introspective and cynical and novelistic — and even the “good guys” aren’t good guys; they’re just flawed rather than evil. Among those who’ve sold their souls, and others who never had them, our charming lead, Jimmy McGill is working to get his back, having pawned it off. It’s the best storytelling and characterization that the current style of TV can produce, and a triumph for the medium.

Masters of the Air is a very different beast. It has the young rising talent of today — notably, Austin Butler and his Elvis voice, alongside Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan and the always excellent Callum Turner — and a bloated 2020s TV budget. Its nine episodes cost almost $300 million, so thank goodness its debut was the highest ever for Apple TV+; and, to be fair, it looks fantastic. But in every other way, Masters of the Air feels very old fashioned. It’s a little quaint or hokey or sentimental — choose your preferred adjective — and its characters don’t cast long shadows; but it’s also one of the best shows I’ve seen since Better Call Saul ended. In the pre-streaming era, Masters of the Air would have been the show everyone was talking about.

For the unfamiliar, Masters of the Air is Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’s latest World War Two TV show; a spin-off of Band of Brothers and The Pacific, focusing on a group of American bomber pilots flying in the 100th Bomb Group, starting as optimistic signees who want to kick the Krauts back to kingdom come, and turning into hard men, who have to repeatedly fly towards waiting death.

This World War Two story is so familiar as to be a trope at this point, but told from the air, there’s a level of threat and intensity you haven’t seen before. For background, whereas British bombers flew at night, frequently missing targets and killing many German civilians, the American bombers flew during the day. The advantage was that, when they got near the target, they had a far higher chance of striking it. The disadvantage was, just as they could see the targets, the Germans could see them; and they had a far higher chance of being shot down. The cost of this choice was catastrophic, and they were nicknamed the “Bloody Hundredth” on account of their casualty numbers. 

For the first half, the show follows a strict formula; the pilots prepare for the mission, flying into it, and lick their wounds in the aftermath. In the hands of a lesser showrunner, this could become dreadfully repetitive and staid; but each mission adds more detail, more complexity, and there’s something utterly horrifying about this repetition and routine. The flights are horror-film tense, —and what makes them all the worse, is that having escaped certain horrific death in one episode, our characters then have to dust themselves off and do it again, and again, and again. 

The use of gore helps with this too. Similar to Mel Gibson’s fabulous Hacksaw Ridge, the somewhat twee, clean, nostalgic look of the show only serves to amplify the shocking brutality of the injuries and deaths. Masters of the Air never leans into the gore — it never feels exploitative — but nor does it shy away either. When a cabin is repeatedly shot through by oncoming Messerschmitts, the co-pilot’s eyes aren’t peacefully closed, with a little blood dripping from the corner of his mouth; he’s torn apart.

Without spoiling anything, the show changes somewhat in the second half, with fewer flight sequences and more time spent on the characters shot out of the air, trying to trying to sneak back across Europe or enduring prisoner-of-war camps. This lacks the sheer intensity of the flying sequences, and there are pacing issues, but there’s enough variety and new information to never feel too drawn out or boring; and when they bump into signs of the Holocaust, it’s utterly harrowing. The shot of pleading, screaming hands stretching out from a passing train carriage is burned into my memory.

Moments like this also help the morality of the show. Though some pilots feel guilt for lost friends, or wrestle with the cost of collateral damage, the show makes it clear: there’s no ambiguity or complex moral matrix to deal with here. 

If you need reminded of how brave these young men were, Masters of the Air makes it unforgettable; and as it closes, with the war over, and they can fly without risk of being shot down, it’s moving. What a fabulous show.