Hollywood's first TV drama about the Iraq war

Over There is on Sky Movies 1 from October 5.

Drive an hour north of downtown LA and you are in a war zone, a slice of hellish Iraq in the arid desert of California. An American unit of young men and women is pinned down by insurgents holed up in the mosque on the hill, all around them a parched landscape is peppered by gunfire.

A jeep explodes, a soldier in combat gear rolls in the dry earth under a sweltering sky - and then a guy in jeans and a T-shirt ambles past with a cheese platter, biscuits and a range of cold drinks. The shooting stops and all the players head for the shade to shelter from the 35C heat.

This is the location of Over There, a controversial new television drama series by producer Steven Bochco - the creator of LA Law, NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues - and writer Chris Gerolmo.

Set in the battle zones of present day Iraq, the uncompromisingly realistic series has drawn flak and praise from all sides in the American media.

Some see it as undermining the morale of the young men and women on the front, others argue it glorifies the excitement and drama of war for the purposes of a television series. Some say it is a necessary piece of television drama at this time.

Then there is the political discussion about whose side Bochco and Gerolmo are on, if any.

The irony about the 13-part series is that it aggravates all sides of the political spectrum. And that makes industry veteran Bochco very comfortable.

"If we are an equal opportunity offender on some level, then I figure we are doing our job."

Over There was always going to be controversial and a flashpoint for discussion. Never before has a television series been set in a current conflict, and this particular one is dividing America. But Bochco is adamant they are simply making a television series, no different in many ways to NYPD Blue.

"It is no more strange to do this than to do a contemporary police drama set in any urban centre in America in which there are hundreds, if not thousands, of freshly minted victims of murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, molestations and so on.

"If you are going to say we are on shaky moral ground doing a show about a war in Iraq because it is ongoing, then you'd also have to argue were on shaky moral ground doing a police drama about an urban war that is ongoing. And I don't think we are.

"This show is not a wolf in sheep's clothing, everyone knows what this show is about."

The political discussion aside, what Over There is about is a group of young soldiers (aged between 18 and 22, ages typical of privates in Iraq) thrown into the firing line and trying to survive.

At one level, Over There conforms to the ensemble formula of such series: the combat unit is made up of two women (one white, one Hispanic), two blacks (one tough and urban, the other educated and sensitive), and two white guys (one full of youthful enthusiasm, the other cooler and intellectual).

But when the storylines factor in their folks back home - an unfaithful wife, the stresses on family and children - plus the drama of frontline action, Over There goes beyond being just another manufactured television series: it touches raw nerves, particularly with American viewers who see photographs of their country's dead every day in their newspapers.

Writer Gerolmo argues that news reports can deal with the facts of a military engagement and serve up a casualty list, but fail to address the human drama.

"We're not exactly trying to fill the holes the news is leaving, but we're telling stories about these young people in Iraq and putting them in situations in which a lot of people on the ground find themselves. We're trying to give the audience a feeling for what that would be like."

To achieve that often terrifying truth, Over There has been conceived with scrupulous attention to detail. The on-set technical adviser is Staff Sergeant Sean Thomas Bunch, a retired Marine who had two tours of duty in Iraq. He took the cast on a five-day boot camp before shooting started to school them in how to handle guns and machinery. He also put them through gruelling manoeuvres in full combat gear.

The cast joke about it now, but back then some of them fainted in the desert heat - although no one thought of quitting. Just the name "Bochco" had been enough to make them sign up.

In a curious piece of life imitating art, many of the actors' lives bear uncanny similarities to the characters they play. Josh Henderson (the gung-ho Bo) comes from Texas and was a football player like his character.

Luke McFarland (the intellectual Dim) graduated from the Julliard Drama Division and plays cello. Keith Robinson (the choir singer Angel) was in a group signed to Motown. And Kirk Sticky Jones (the ghetto graduate Smoke) is Brooklyn-born, was a member of the hip-hop group ONYX, and appeared in such hard-edge movies as Dead Presidents and Clockers.

All have friends who have served in Iraq or the military, and Omid Abtahi - the Middle Eastern GI Tariq who turns up in episode two and is met with suspicion by Smoke - has a brother who served in Afghanistan.

"He has a hard time talking about it," says Abtahi sitting in his trailer escaping the desert heat. "He tells me about the racial comments he got and I kinda felt it was very similar to how my character feels about it. But [my brother] doesn't feel comfortable talking about actual combat.

"He was nervous about the show, at first, but he saw the first two episodes and went, 'My God, it's so intense'. It gave him goosebumps at certain moments, like the truck going past before it gets blown up - and the roadblock duty. He said we'd done a really good job."

Abtahi accepts that some people will be uncomfortable with the graphic nature and sudden violence of the show. In the first episode a man has the top half of his body blown off, in the second an Iraqi child is killed by the soldiers manning a roadblock. But he says Bochco and Gerolmo are trying to write an apolitical story about the reality of frontline war, and how soldiers are changed by the events in which they find themselves.

"We each have our own politics but Steven Bochco said it best, 'once you get into politics you lose half your audience and it stops being a television show'. So I think they are being pretty smart staying away from [politics] ... as much as it is possible to stay away from it."

When Bochco and Gerolmo - who wrote and sings the theme to Over There, as well as directing some episodes - sat down to create the show, they knew it would be about young soldiers at the front and not the decision makers in the corridors of power.

"We also knew," says Bochco, "we wanted to spend a significant amount of time tethering that to stories about husbands, wives, children and parents of those left behind at home. If we go back and forth we get a much fuller, more dimensional picture about what the consequence of war is to everybody who is connected to it.

"We have no problem with being controversial and doing a show about an arena which by definition will create a certain amount of controversy. What we are adamant about is not letting the show become a political forum for a point of view. That is simply not going to happen."

Bochco feels more passionately about Over There than all his award-winning predecessors. But a 13-part series only starts to tell the stories he wants to explore, which is why they hope for a second, if not more.

"When you have 40 or 50 hours of storytelling, only then you have created a tapestry."

If Over There gets another season, like the American troops in Iraq it is concerned with, they could all be in for a long haul.

The O.T. Company

1. Frank "Dim" Dunphy (Luke MacFarlane)
Cornell University graduate and the smartest of the grunts who - for reasons we don't know yet - joins up, leaving his new wife and stepson. Courageous and cool, questions the morality of war. "The tragedy here is we're savages, we're thrilled to kill each other. We're monsters and war is what unmasks us."

2. Maurice "Smoke" Williams (Kirk "Sticky Fingaz" Jones)
Grew up in the ghetto, mostly stoned, and in the company of gang bangers. Sees whites as just as much of an enemy as the insurgents. Slack in carrying out duties. Iraq is just another dangerous block. "I grew up in a combat zone."

3. Sergeant Chris "Scream" Silas (Erik Palladino)
The battle-hardened combat veteran who is determined to keep his squad of greenhorns and himself alive. "I was going home after a year in this shithole and yesterday they tell me that I'm staying 90 more days and taking on a squad of virgins."

4. Brenda "Mrs B" Mitchell (Nicki Aycox)
A driver in the unit, and a liability because she is paralysed with fear in battle. Also has a nasty streak which is both revealing and uncomfortable. Could be trouble. A fatalist. "I know I'll get killed. I've seen those faces on Nightline. Every one of them is me."

5. Esmeralda "Doublewide" Del Rio (Lizette Carrion)
Mechanic. Newly married, has left her husband and baby behind. Smart and tough with a sense of humour. "Mommy's doing fine but she misses you and your daddy real bad."

6. Avery "Angel" King (Keith Robinson)
Quiet, contained, the unit's best shot. Sang in the church choir back home in Arkansas. After failing an audition in New York for an internationally-touring choir he was too ashamed to go home, so joined the army which he now regrets. "Don't ever do nothin' outta anger, boy. Take it from me."

7. Bo Rider (Josh Henderson)
Enthusiastic, star quarterback at home in Abilene, Texas. Has enlisted so he can go to college on the GI bill when he gets out. Popular, but prone to headstrong heroism. "I love the army."

Lowdown

WHAT: Over There, the first television drama series about the Iraq war.

WHERE & WHEN: Sky Television is screening the series on its Sky Movies 1 channel on Wednesdays from October 5 at 8.30pm. The first two episodes will be played back-to-back. Episodes will replay on Sky Movies 2, Sunday October 9, 9.05pm.