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Austin Butler (right) and Callum Turner in Masters of the Air.Credit:Apple TV+

In that sense,Masters of the Air is neither sequel nor spin-off toBand of Brothers (2001) andThe Pacific (2010). But it is clearly designed to serve alongside them,telling the story of the master aviators who performed aerial miracles in the war,just asBand of Brothers took us into the Western Front of World War II with Easy Company,andThe Pacific followed the men of the 1st,5th and 7th regiments of the the 1st Marine Division in the Pacific.

Perhaps intentionally,the series lacks the edge of a contemporary spin on war;it is instead subtly and neatly dialled back. It has polish but no spit,no doubt intended to live in a roughly contemporaneous world alongside its two thematic forebears.

The most striking thing about the series is its visual effects,not just when they are recreating dogfights,but much of the series’ airborne adventures. Whether by design or not,this isBiggles for the TV binge audience. A sort of sheepskin bomber jacket meets jolly-hockey-sticks,with American accents and explosions,aerial dives and near misses.

It also quickly answers this question:if you assembled the hottest actors right now (Austin Butler fromElvis,Barry Keoghan fromSaltburn and Ncuti Gatwa fromDoctor Who) and plonked them in the one show,would you get one show that was three (or more) times better than the others?

Ncuti Gatwa in Masters of the Air.Credit:Apple TV+

The answer is no. Or at least,not really. Which is not to say thatMasters of the Air isn’t aiming for perfect and giving it a red-hot go. Rather,that while the series itself is physically beautiful,it feels narratively wobbly. It’s all fine print and no headline.

It is also reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s filmNapoleon,another large-scale assembly of historical details which struggles to fire up its emotional engines.Masters of the Air has a similar struggle. The fighters and pilots have no difficulty getting airborne,but the emotional narrative doesn’t feel like it gets solid uplift. It leans on narration to bind together the pieces that,inNapoleon,for example,were left to feel more like vignettes than scenes.

Like a lot of narrow-bandwidth deep-drive dramas,it does not necessarily require expertise from the audience,but unlike a lot of see-how-we-go television series,this presumes a little too much. Perhaps for aviation buffs it will land likeThe Sopranos but if you don’t have either a foreknowledge of war history,or at least an interest in it,there’s little to anchor you in the story.

Large-scale productions tend to run like Dickensian serial stories,pushing the story at you one chapter at a time.Band of Brothers andThe Pacific bucked that somewhat by achieving a sort of collective uplift for the whole story at once.Masters of the Air attempts the same thing but with less success.

And yet,it holds itself together. Mostly. Cary Joji Fukunaga’s direction is crisp. The attention to detail is astonishing,but it might also ultimately be one of the weaknesses of the story. There’s no grit,either in the tone or in the production design. Everything is perfect,right down to Austin Butler’s tally-ho moustache. It’s like an archival image from military history brought to life.

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