Press

NY Metro
5 October 2001

Band of Brothers

HBO
Sundays, 9 p.m.
Premieres September 9

Saving Private Ryan redux If you loved Steven Spielberg’s Oscar near-miss, think of this HBO mini-series, produced by Spielberg and Tom Hanks, as the DVD boxed set with eight hours of additional footage.

Who are those guys? Based on Stephen Ambrose’s best-seller, Band of Brothers follows one rifle company from D day to war’s end. Like Ryan, it features a cast of relative unknowns (though David Schwimmer turns up in a couple of episodes). It sometimes gets hard to distinguish one twentysomething white boy from the next, but a clear standout is Damian Lewis, whose portrayal of Lieutenant Richard Winters is conflicted, complex, and, finally, ennobling.

An Englishman abroad “It’s just a lot of fun doing accents,” says Lewis, 30, a Londoner who was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for four years. “I had never done an American accent professionally — only in front of my bathroom mirror.”

Hit the beach HBO sunk $120 million into the ten-part series, which is the cornerstone of the company’s plan to bring in a million new subscribers a year for the next five years. With new Sopranos episodes unavailable until June (possibly September) 2002, Brothers must step up to the plate in a big way.

Who wins this one? Is there really any doubt? HBO has some of the best names in the business attached and delivers the guy-cry mini-series of the century. The History Channel had better look to its laurels.