The Pacific (HBO Miniseries)

Granted, World War II’s Pacific theater of combat was horrible enough in every way to make even certain parts of WWI trench warfare look bucolic by comparison. Also granted, this HBO miniseries about a bunch of jarheads fighting their bloody, gory way from one fetid, muddy, jungle island to the next doesn’t provide as much ultimate satisfaction as Band of Brothers could – they never even make it to Japan. But like that earlier series, The Pacific succeeds as a masterful, grueling account of what it was like for these men (all based on real Marines) to undertake some of the most vicious and unremorseful combat the world had ever seen while trying to emerge on the other side as something resembling humans. Anybody with even a passing interest in stories of men and women at war deserves this set.