Band of Brothers
2001, 10 Hours (10*)
Dirs: Tom Hanks, Philip Alden Robinson, Mikael Salomon, David Nutter, David Leyland, David Frankel, Tony To
Best Miniseries (Emmy, GG)
Based on the book by historian Stephen Ambrose, who worked with Ken Burns on The Civil War for PBS and who also co-produced, this immense achievement follows Easy Company from training in England, to their parachute drop the night before D-Day until the end of the war, and is interspersed with interviews of surviving participants.
Reportedly this cost producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg over 100 million, followed their collaboration on Saving Pvt Ryan, and is now perhaps the best docudrama of all-time. The D-Day parachute drop sequence alone is probably the best war footage yet produced - it combines the best CGI special effects with historical accuracy and exciting editing to create a nightmarish vision of war never seen before. This is no battle in space with imaginary deaths of aliens, this is the real thing and exactly what happened to thousands of allied soldiers.
Worthy of its length, each part is a different film with a different director, hence the overall consistency may appear uneven to the most discerning, but that's a triviality. I also think having an unknown cast was a stroke of genius, because it makes it seem like we're watching real soldiers, not some star pretending he is a real wartime participant.
This is an all-time top 10! 6 Emmys for 19 nominations
