The BBC has spent £15 million showing America singlehandedly winning the second world war
STEPHEN GLOVER
The BBC has not had much luck with its blockbuster dramas recently. Audiences have been disappointing. So the corporation is investing a great deal of hope in Band of Brothers, a ten-part mini-series to be screened in the autumn. The BBC did not make the film itself, but has paid Home Box Office, the American cable channel, an estimated £15 million for the privilege of showing it. This is by a long chalk the largest amount of money that our public-sector broadcaster has ever shelled out for a television drama. Even I can calculate that it works out at £1.5 million per episode.
Band of Brothers may reverse the BBC's fortunes and be a huge ratings success. But it is likely to create a lot of controversy in this country because the film comes from the stable of Steven Spielberg. Readers may have seen his Saving Private Ryan. Although undoubtedly gripping stuff, it gave the impression that American forces were solely responsible for D-Day. The role of the British, Canadian and other Commonwealth troops who made up nearly 40 per cent of the Allied invasion force was not so much glossed over as entirely ignored. Spielberg, along with Tom Hanks, the star of Private Ryan, has directed what is described as a follow-up rather than a sequel. Band of Brothers chronicles the allegedly true exploits of Easy Company, the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States army. This is what the promotional material says. 'Starting with their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942, [the film] recounts the achievements of the elite rifle company, which parachuted into France early on D-day morning, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and captured Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden . . . and became true American heroes.'
You get the message, I think. Band of Brothers will give the impression that the United States singlehandedly fought and won the war in Europe. Apart from Private Ryan, there have been other recent examples of Hollywood airbrushing out the rest of the Allies. Last year the film U-571 portrayed American sailors capturing the Enigma code machine from a German U-boat, whereas history records that it was the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy which pulled off this incredible feat. I am sure that the men of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States army who are depicted in Band of Brothers were
enormously brave, and we all owe them a great debt. But ten episodes concentrating entirely on their exploits — no British or other Allied soldiers play any part — will irritate a lot of people, not least British servicemen who also risked their lives.
How could the BBC have committed record sums of licence-payer's money on such a project? Alan Yentob, the BBC's director of drama, reportedly made the deal over lunch with Steven Spielberg almost a year ago, though negotiations were completed by someone called Sophie TurnerLaing who is in charge of programme acquisition. The BBC proudly describes itself as co-producer of Band of Brothers in this country, but it had absolutely no say in the script or the casting. In other words, it has bought Steven Spielberg's version of history off the shelf. Home Box Office conceived the project in early 1999 and began filming in April of last year, finishing in November. The BBC jumped on board in July, and announced its involvement at the Edinburgh Festival last September.
It so happens that about 75 per cent of the cast of Band of Brothers are British actors playing American soldiers, though this has nothing whatsoever to do with the BBC. Mara Mikialian of Home Box Office in Los Angeles explained to me that there are tax incentives in using a largely British cast and crew, and the movie was filmed in Hatfield. No doubt British actors are also paid less than American ones would be. There are, in fact, no big stars in the film; one of the main parts is played by Damien Lewis, an Englishman whom few people have heard of. A man I spoke to in the BBC's publicity department was very chuffed that so many Britons should be playing Americans. He said that the film 'had had the support of Number Ten Downing Street'. No great surprises there, then. All that mattered to him was that British actors were getting a good show. It did not occur to him that there might be anything distasteful in the BBC showing ten episodes of a drama that glorifies American heroes and forgets that any British ones ever existed.
They just don't get it, do they? So far as men like Alan Yentob and Greg Dyke, the BBC's director-general, are concerned, Band of Brothers is simply a cracking good yarn. That is the beginning and end of it. They know little about history and care less about the ordinary Britons who fought in the last war. I am sure the thought that anyone might be offended by this series has not even crossed their minds. They would not, if they were given a million years, if they had the rest of time, consider making their own ten-part mini-series showing a crack British regiment fighting its way across Europe. That would be nationalistic and vainglorious. But it is perfectly all right to show Americans in the same role.
Home Box Office is not a company to do things by halves. It constructed 11 European villages on a disused aerodrome at Hatfield from which, I am sure, Battle of Britain pilots once flew. It employed 10,000 extras and spent £65 million, of which it is getting a whopping £15 million back from the BBC. Now it is planning to show the first two episodes of Band of Brothers during a celebration at Utah beach in Normandy on 6 June, the anniversary of the D-Day landings. American veterans are being flown over and, in a surprising acknowledgment that other countries played at least a bit-part in the war, the heads of state of Great Britain, France and Canada have been invited (though no invitations have been sent to Moscow) as well as the President of the United States. (Neither the Queen nor Tony Blair is expected to attend, not least because the general election will probably be held the next day.) Thus Hollywood sets itself up as the ringmaster of history, inviting politicians to collude in its monstrous recreation of events.
Shame on it — but a far, far greater shame on our own BBC which has squandered £15 million of our money with the sole ignoble object of rescuing its ratings. Thanks to Greg Dyke and Alan Yentob, this autumn we will see British actors playing American soldiers singlehandedly saving the world — and all of it paid for by the British licence-payer.
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