One of the year's biggest TV events kicks off this weekend with the premiere of the latest HBO historical epic from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg: "The Pacific."
The first hour airs at 8 p.m. Sunday, with numerous repeats on the various HBO outlets through the week.
The sprawling story of the island hopping campaign the U.S. waged in the Pacific during World War II, like its HBO predecessor, "Band of Brothers," focuses on the small picture of individual warriors in a vast struggle.
The stories are punctuated by the loud, painful, frightening realism that Spielberg used to turn "Saving Private Ryan" into something far beyond its melodramatic plot. On a big TV screen, with the sound cranked, "The Pacific" creates an experience that's as close as we'll come to combat in our living room.
Big-screen war films made a splash in the Oscars this year, both Quentin Tarantino's fantasy "Inglourious Basterds" and Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq war drama "The Hurt Locker."
"The Pacific" of course, will unfold differently. Tarantino created an alternate ending to World War II, Bigelow consciously avoided the questions that surround our invasion and occupation of Iraq.
I've only screened the first hour of "The Pacific," so far, and I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that you'll see combat by the time the credits role. Americans got into the fight far sooner in the Pacific than in Europe. And after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurs just before the start of this miniseries, there were no questions about why we were in the fight.
The last Hanks-Spielberg HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers," spent extensive time prepping its boys for the D-Day landing in 1944. In "The Pacific," there's little time to get ready. Combat had begun by 1942.
Don't expect the same focused storyline as the one that drove "Band of Brothers." This was a very different war than the one in Europe. Instead of one specific military unit, "The Pacific" interweaves the stories of several soldiers whose paths cross.
For the next 10 weeks, their stories will be unfolding with an intensity that television rarely reaches.
Lots of lesser TV: The premiere of some other network shows Sunday night demonstrates just how forgettable most television is:
- NBC's "Minute to Win it." 6 p.m., Channel 4 -- This one-hour game show features Food Network standby Guy Fieri as ringmaster over a bunch of stunt-like games.
- Fox's "Sons of Tucson," 8:30 p.m., Channel 6 -- Another one of those mean sitcoms about a slacker. In this case, kids are involved.
- NBC's "The Apprentice," 9 p.m., Chanel 4 -- The latest edition of Donald Trump's "reality" show features disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich apparently trying to earn money for his legal defense.
There are also a handful of other "reality" premieres and season premieres over the cable spectrum.
The only thing worth scheduling your night around this weekend is "The Pacific."
Speaking of Blago: The ex-Illinois governor showed just how shameless he is, reading David Letterman's top 10 list on Thursday night about his own debut on "The Apprentice."
In many cases, self-deprecating humor can be charming. In the case of Blagojevich, it's pathetic.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
