Worth Watching: 'Masters of the Air’, ‘Escape from North Korea’ and ‘Queer Planet’
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Here are your recommendations for the next week.
A BIG HOLLYWOOD EPIC
Masters of the Air (new episodes weekly on Apple TV+) - It doesn’t get much bigger in scale and scope for a television show. A companion to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, this Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg executive-produced series follows the 100th Bomb Group, a team of Americans stationed in Eastern England who made risky missions against Nazi Germany during World War II.
The scale and special effects, most of them in the air, are of such a scale that at times you have to remind yourself this is a television show, not a Hollywood movie. Then there’s the casting — Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Ncuti Gatwa [above] and Barry Keoghan.
Most of the time, you’re in the cockpit alongside these characters as they undertake daring missions. These are claustrophobic, intense scenes, and not only that — you learn a great deal situated with them in the front end of a plane. For example, if a shot from the enemy breaks the window in the plane, a big risk is hypothermia, as temperatures can drop to minus 50 degrees celsius.
A challenge, though, is the sheer number of characters, meaning that at times you only learn a few surface things about them. As a result, it has alienated quite a few people, and critics alike. But did I learn enough to find this show engrossing and worth watching? Yes, I did — hence why I’m recommending it to you.
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