Blockbuster TV: Generation Kill

In a break from our normal programming, I thought I'd tell you about a sharp new effort from the makers of The Wire and The Sopranos that, although appearing on the smaller screen, will probably have a great deal of appeal for the Blockbuster Buzz demographic:

Generation Kill is yet another big-budget TV drama from HBO, the US cable channel behind The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City and (to a lesser extent) Rome. After its first episode aired earlier this week, it has already been feted by critics as a triumph and is the most talked about television programme of the year.

 

Created by The Wire writers Ed Burns and Davis Simon it’s a look at the USmilitary presence in Iraq during the second Gulf War. Shot, like The Wire, with an Altmanesque background of overlapping dialogue and half-heard conversations it deliberately evokes the disorientation of being suddenly presented with a group of men (and they are all men, there are no women in the opening episode’s cast) who share a history and professional knowledge that you will never share.

 

To ease our assimilation into this macho world of combat-hungry marines is a Rolling Stone reporter, played by  Lee Tergesen. Tergesen’s character, quickly given the callsign ‘Scribe’ by the troops among whom he is embedded, represents Evan Wright - whose book about his experiences as an embedded reporter with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion inspired the series. Nearly all of the characters are better known by catchy military callsigns like ‘Iceman’ and ‘Q-Tip’ than their actual names, which makes keeping tabs on the huge cast a little easier.

 

Remembering who’s who is made more problematic by the pettifogging interference of an officious sergeant who insists on uniform regulations, down to precise moustache length, in a combat zone. In the first, phoney war, episode there’s little else for the marines to worry about, so they occupy themselves with pop culture arguments, bullish gung-ho statements about their keenness to get in combat and ‘Get Some’ and listening to the BBC news. A running joke about the rumoured demise of Jennifer Lopez culminates with the eminently quotable line “The Batallion Commander offered no sitrep as to J-Lo’s status”

 

Expect a lot of military jargon mixed into the dialogue when you eventually get to see Generation Kill, but luckily it’s as easy to infer meaning from context as the snippets of Latin we encountered in Rome.

 

More than any other HBO series to date it’s The Sopranos, rather than The Wire, that GK resembles. Characters are routinely heard saying things that few right-thinking Britons would ever even think, but saying them with such charismatic charm that it’s hard not to be swept up in their amoral bloodlust.

 

Generation Kill is an assured hit. The title will almost certainly come to describe the generation of Americans who believed implicitly in the Bush administrations justification for war as terms like Gen-X and Generation Y described their stay-at-home slacker cousins. The response to ‘fan’ letters sent by grade-school children, the black comedy of an inexperienced journalist struggling into his gas mask, the regimental pizza deliver – all of these are memorable moments that most other dramas would use as the highlight of the series. And Generation Kill is only on episode one. Even though it’s not due to reach British TV until at least 2009, expect to hear imitations of Lt. Col. ‘Godfather’ Ferrando’s hoarse bark in every saloon bar by summer’s end.

Comments

[Clement Atlee]

I've seen the first two episodes and I'd agree. It's gripping from the off and there's some great performances - check out Sergeant Rudy Reyes who plays himself. I'm gonna be free-balling all the way to episode 7.