TV Eye: Campaign to end all campaigns

Wartime mini-series The Pacific promises much. Photo / Supplied

War is hell. Endless marketing campaigns are an altogether more tortuous thing.

TV One's promotion of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks' The Pacific, which finally hit the beaches last Monday night, seemed to last longer and be more epic in the scale than either the World War II campaign itself or the mini-series depicting it, a show apparently costing an astonishing US$150 million to make.

I'd turn on the TV and there it was, The Pacific promoted with swelling music, young men looking grim and lots of sweeping action. I open the Herald and there was a report about some promotional stunt on the harbour. I'd walked to my bus stop and there was a giant poster. I'd walk to the letter box and there was a facsimile of a "genuine WWII letter" addressed "To the householder".

The "genuine WWII letter", on fake American Red Cross paper, was by Jonny, an American marine who fought on Okinawa, an American-only campaign in 1945.

I might have argued that this piece of promotion was about as relevant to 21st century New Zealand householders as sending us a facsimile of Vincent van Gogh's ear.

However a letter writer to the Herald last week put this in perspective.

"I wish [TV One bosses] could have seen the pain and confusion on my 83-year-old mother's face when she received her letter," wrote Laverne Read of Orewa.

"Even after 55 years, the memories of her younger brother Douglas, whose plane was shot down by the Japanese over the Solomons, are undiminished and raw."

Laverne's letter concluded: "It seems cruel to resurrect such terrible emotions in people who have already faced loss". To which, I would add, for the promotion of a damned TV show.

And in marketing it so heavily, TVNZ has done the show no favours.

You might think it impossible for a US$150 million series made by Spielberg and Hanks to find itself overwhelmed by its own hype, but in truth it has been.

So what of the show itself? I was genuinely enthusiastic at the prospect of this companion piece to 2001's Band of Brothers, a mini-series which, while hardly breaking new ground when compared to other HBO shows like The Sopranos, was at least a genuinely good watch. However Band of Brothers' very quality - great writing, production and performances - sets the level of expectation for The Pacific even higher.

The Pacific isn't quite a damp squib.

However the first episode somehow managed to be both a plodding march to war and a rushed sketch, with half of it devoted to establishing character - and not particularly well either.

In the immediate aftermath of bombing of Pearl Harbor, three young men, whose faces and names never quite fixed in my mind, joined - or in the case of one, failed to join - the marine corps.

All the chestnuts were present. The lighting of candles in a church, the family Christmas where the seasonal bonhomie doesn't quite cancel out the dread, the strained railway station farewell by a father and son, the rousing patriotic speeches.

Much of the dialogue was expository, explaining who-was-who, what-was-what and the international situation in 1942: the Japanese were winning.

And much of what was said seemed to come from The Bumper Book of War Movie Cliches: "Here is what the Japs are not expecting - the US marine corps ... Just get the job done and come home to us ... There is a war on, everyone has to make sacrifices ... When you see the Japs, kill them all."

When the action finally arrived it was - as is now the established rule since Spielberg's influential Saving Private Ryan - loud, visceral, confusing and ended in a pile of cut up corpses. There was bang for all the bucks, but still it disappointed.

The Pacific, with its narrow focus on three or four young men, may, in coming episodes, develop some memorable characters inside the giant story and huge special effects budget.

One can hope.

But so far, that marketeer's letter from Jonny on Okinawa has told me more about what war is than Hanks, Spielberg and their US$150 million budget: "He was the closest buddy I ever had," Jonny wrote to his mother, "... I'm not ashamed to say I cried many nights after [he was killed]. I wish I'd get a case of amnesia ..."