Over There

‘WHAT happens in the final episode of Over There, the US TV mini-series about soldiers in Iraq, is not yet revealed?

The accepatable face of war

But at only 13 episodes in duration, the fear is that Americans will be celebrating victory on the magic box while the real soldiers are still fighting. Or, as with the Gulf War proper, there could always be a series 2.

But what about this TV show, which the Telegraph stops to look at? Making entertainment out of war is nothing new, but doing so as the real battle rages is risky, and surely not all that necessary when the TV news is full of images from the actual war.

But the Telegraph has seen a report in the New York Times celebrating the show for bringing war to the little screen at a time when it is rarely on the network news bulletins.

The New York Post’s reviewer says the show “dramatises wartime slaughter and suffering that all too often goes unnoticed”. Clearly, she doesn’t look at the internet much, where chilling images of human slaughter are commonplace.

But she goes on to say that “the danger is that viewers could end up loving the war as much as they love the troops”.

While the US military ponders that happy notion – a Gallup poll finds that only 43 per cent of Americans predict victory in Iraq for their boys and girls – the Telegraph looks at the show’s plot.

The action centres on “seven soldiers and their sergeant” as they fight insurgents in the sands. There are, as the paper expects, two black men (“one angry, the other conscientious”), a Hispanic, an Arab-American, two women and…

Oh dear. The paper forgets to mention who the other solider is. He’s unknown - like the show’s ending…’

Posted: 29th, July 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink