When it was released it had a budget of around $125 million, making it the most expensive miniseries to have been made by any network at the time.
The production values were immense. The cast was star-studded. It was executively produced by two of the biggest figures in Hollywood at the time, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and came off the back of their previous World War II collaboration, Saving Private Ryan.
The series re-shaped how we thought of TV drama, which had always been seen in a lesser light when compared with Hollywood movies. This taught producers, creatives and perhaps most importantly audiences, that it didn’t have to be this way.
Suddenly, TV could be an arena in which to tell long-form stories with the same production values as movies, and viewers didn’t even need to leave their homes.
What followed was a wave of prestige TV, particularly from Band of Brothers’ home, HBO. Shows such as Rome, Deadwood and Boardwark Empire set new markers for what we could expect, as did series from the newly emerging world of streaming.
By the time Spielberg and Hanks’s next Second World War project The Pacific rolled around in 2010, things had changed, and we were living in an age of prestige TV. That series had an even higher budget, even better production values, and was rewarded handsomely with reviews and accolades. However, it didn’t appear to move the dial in the way its predecessor did.
But now, as Masters of the Air arrives on a wave of anticipation and a budget reported to be double that of Band of Brothers, how likely is it to change the TV landscape in the way that its primary precursor did?
Well, there is certainly some merit to say that it will have a significant impact. The production values on Masters of the Air are absolutely next level – in truth, we’ve never really seen anything like it on the small screen before.
Aerial combat has never been this well shot, or looked this realistic and terrifying. Like Band of Brothers before it, it also features a combination of up and coming actors alongside some real Hollywood stars, like Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan.
The show’s casting, in itself, is no longer really news. For years now TV series have been roping in A-listers and have become just as attractive to them as a role in a major film.
In 2022, John C Reilly told us that he had for a long time thought, like many others, that television “had a stigma of being low quality or rushed”, but that Ben Stiller’s Escape at Dannemora changed his mind and “really turned me around about TV and its possibilities”. That show featured a cast led by major Hollywood stars Benicio del Toro, Patricia Arquette and Paul Dano.
Since Netflix first started making original shows, it has been throwing money at its scripted series like House of Cards, The Crown and Stranger Things, the latest season of which reportedly cost $30 million per episode. Subsequently, other streamers have followed suit, in a race to higher and higher production values – bigger stars, higher budgets, more expansive storytelling.
Audiences now expect a level of visual quality quite unlike anything which would have previously been deemed possible, turning some away from linear broadcasters, which have far tighter budgets, altogether. When Marvel announced their first range of Disney Plus show, they made it their mission to produce series which looked indiscriminate from their movies.
Of course, there’s a reason why those Marvel shows tend to run for between six and nine episodes (standard in the UK but less so the US), and likely why Netflix has pivoted to more reality shows and documentaries. The budgets and production times on dramas, sci-fi and fantasy are simply too, inordinately high.
Racing to achieve better and better production values is something which has affected other shows too. It’s arguable that Game of Thrones’s reputation was sunk by this obsession, as the need to constantly up the ante with more realistic dragons, bigger battles and grander sets meant that budgets swelled and production and post-production elongated dramatically.
The final two seasons, which many fans and critics considered “rushed” in terms of pacing, shrunk in episode length because they had to – the budgets and time constraints meant it was only possible to produce that number of episodes without taking years upon years and breaking the bank.
People always suggest that the show should have, therefore, kept going with more seasons beyond eight, but neither the stars nor the creators wanted to stick around indefinitely, working for two years at a time to produce a matter of six or seven episodes.
HBO’s CEO Casey Bloys essentially said as much in 2018, revealing that it took the show an almost two year break between seasons 7 and 8 to produce the latter to the visual standard deemed necessary.
He said: “They take the time they need to do the show at its highest level of quality. As the show has gone on, it’s gotten bigger — big battle scenes, big special effects. These things take time.”
This can be seen in other arenas too. Just as Doctor Who’s budget has increased because of the BBC’s new deal to produce the show with Bad Wolf and Disney Plus, and fans have noticed an uptick in the show’s production values, its episode count has lowered (barring recent years when Covid and behind-the-scenes changes were a factor). Where 14 episodes used to be produced each year, the show is now down to nine.
Showrunner Russell T Davies explained: “The numbers [of episodes] have gone down over the years, partly because it’s so expensive. I don’t think we could make more episodes a year.”
One has to imagine that now, with Masters of the Air setting new standards for production companies to meet, it could well cause waves within the industry, as others look to up their game.
It could be argued that, being on Apple TV+, not enough people will be able to watch it for it to have that great of an impact. However, the awards bodies will see it. The producers will see it. Like Band of Brothers, it may not be the most widely-viewed show among consumers, but it will be seen by the people who count, who are making the decisions as to where their production houses, streamers and broadcasters go next with their cash and with their time.
You could, of course, look to Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to make this point, or Citadel, or Stranger Things, all of which also had hugely expensive budgets, reportedly more than Masters of the Air.
But Stranger Things was in its fourth season, a proven success at the height of its power; The Rings of Power was building out an entire fantasy world with a hefty VFX load on its hands, and a hugely popular intellectual property (IP) behind it; and Citadel doesn’t look as expensive on screen as it was in reality – we can blame a complicated shoot and numerous behind-the-scenes factors for that.
Masters in the Air, on the other hand, is a historical drama, with precedent for critical success, but also precedent for working with a small budget. Again, Band of Brothers was made for half the cost. Inflation of course accounts for some of that increase, but certainly not all of it.
It’s also worth noting that three of these four shows, including Masters of the Air, are made by either Prime Video, which is owned by Amazon, or Apple TV+ – in truth, theoretically, neither of them actually need to make money.
As Netflix and Disney Plus look to reduce costs, Apple and Amazon continue on apace, commissioning bigger and bigger shows and pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved on television.
Their subscription price may go up a bit to compensate for some of this, but in reality, that’s not touching the sides. It has long been established that the streaming service model isn’t the lucrative goldmine that it was once thought to be.
But Apple and Amazon are two of the biggest, most profitable companies in the world, with some of the deepest pockets. If their entertainment arms don’t make a profit, will it really affect them in the same way as other businesses, for which entertainment is their primary product and revenue stream?
Most will argue that Band of Brothers changed things for the better, for both TV creatives and audiences, bringing about a golden age for the industry.
Unintentionally, coming right when it does, Masters of the Air might just change things for the worse, as it gives audiences even more unrealistic expectations of just what we should expect drama to look like at this point in time.
Who knows where the industry goes from here, but it seems likely that there will be something of a push and pull in the years to come, as other companies attempt to make dramas with the production values of Apple and Prime Video shows, but on smaller budgets and in smaller time-frames.
Could this be the moment at which other streamers and broadcasters say ‘No, we can’t reach those levels of production or pay $250 million on one non-IP based series’?
That could then leave Apple and Prime Video sitting pretty as the masters of truly prestige drama, while linear channels, other streamers and even HBO have to settle for their shows looking cheaper and less polished?
Masters of the Air is an absolutely extraordinary series both narratively and visually, there’s no doubt about that, and that its attained the visual quality it has can only be a good thing for fans sitting down to watch it – they are being truly treated.
But as a model for TV production, it simply doesn’t seem like a sustainable example, particularly for returning series intended to return for multiple seasons, like Game of Thrones was. If producers choose to follow its model, the industry will surely, eventually, reach breaking point and have to reconsider how much a series should cost and how extravagant it should look.
If most don’t, but Apple and Prime persist, then we could end up with a two-tiered strata in production values way beyond what we have right now.
Either way, it looks the the team behind Band of Brothers might be about to change the face of TV once again.
New on Apple TV+ in January 2024
The first two episodes of Masters of the Air are available to stream now, with new episodes arriving weekly on Fridays on Apple TV+. Subscribe to Apple TV+ here. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
Try magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Podcast.
