Reviews

After 3 episodes, it is brilliant. My father was a radio operator/gunner in the 8th Bomber Command on a B-17 over Germany. He flew toward the end of the war so he didn't see the fierce fighting as depicted in this series. But I can see what it was like inside the B-17.

The effort in this series is as much as you could hope for - from the excellent actors, costumes, special effects, music to writing, it is amazing.

It is sometimes very hard to watch, very emotional. Heavy bomber warfare was new and the US was figuring it out but often at great cost.

I really appreciate all the effort to bring this series to completion. It took years. Covid made filming even more difficult. I look forward to the rest of the episodes.

I was looking forward to this. I thought it looked good from the preview. It's awful. It's an awful script. Very simplistic, predicable script. Not at all believable. It felt as if a beginner wrote it. It's not funny or scary or interesting. It's played as if it is hysterical and surprising. No. Darn. I really was looking forward to this. Some good actors in it. They just have a boring, bad script. Maybe the premise is interesting. I hope people don't really do this. But the lines are horrible.

Oh - and I early on predicted the ending. (Edit: Not the ending ending but a business agreement made. That ending.) I thought it would happen sooner. I guess anybody can get a script greenlit nowadays. Great actors, well made production-wise (I'm not in the biz but I used to act so I'm more critical. ) But the concept was not made to be believable. There should have been more to make it seem plausible. Legally, it seemed too easy. Maybe because a Brit wrote it and he doesn't know how sharp and picky we are here. The grifter wouldn't have gotten away with this so easily.

Not quite sure what the film is trying to convey, but if it is implying that you have two choices - a life without passion in AA and life of passion and desire without AA and with active alcoholism, then that is incorrect and misleading. I don't understand why it is implying that joining AA to treat alcoholism is just a grim life of saying no to everything and denying yourself things out of fear of being triggered. That is not what AA is about. The goal is to be happy and functional. To flourish in all aspects of life. Some achieve it, some don't. The suggestion is to follow the tools of the program as fully as you can to achieve the maximum results. There's a reason they say "stick around for the miracle". People's lives improve in ways they never thought possible. Their lives get bigger.

The grim life is either being an active alcoholic or gritting your teeth in abstinence but still being dysfunctional and miserable - a dry drunk. AA helps with much more than just stopping drinking. The real work begins after you stop the craving and stay sober. Then you use tools to maintain sobriety and deal with life "on life's terms".

How can someone write about AA just by having friends in it, going to a few meetings or reading about it? If you don't get it, you don't get it. But it feels like someone saying probably all psychiatric medicine makes you a zombie and it's no life. That is not true either. Medicine can change and save lives. But you have to take it.

Is this film positing that AA removes all possibilities in your life except a grim sobriety? It just isn't true. There is much joy, laughter, support and growth in AA. There is a whole syndrome behind alcoholism beyond drinking that is helped in AA: isolating, not asking for help, destructive behavior ("character defects"). Something feels very creepy in this film. As someone said elsewhere, if this film gives a suffering alcoholic a distrust of AA and causes them not to seek help, that would be an awful result.