The Pacific (Season 1)

The Pacific (2010) is an HBO war drama miniseries you can watch online on iFILM — ten episodes produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg through Playtone and DreamWorks Television. Hanks narrates. The story pulls from the memoirs of two men who were actually there: Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge, both of whom lived long enough to write the books.

Three Marines, three separate paths across the same killing ground. James Badge Dale plays Leckie, the writer-turned-rifleman grinding through Guadalcanal. Jon Seda is John Basilone, the Medal of Honor recipient who could have stayed home but didn't. Joseph Mazzello's Sledge arrives green and watches the war strip everything clean. Rami Malek fills out the ensemble as Snafu Shelton — a man who's adapted to this too well to ever fully come back. The islands they move through — Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa — are not interchangeable backdrops; each one has its own particular cost.

Eight Emmy Awards. A companion to Band of Brothers, but this theater runs hotter, wetter, and without the European theater's relative clarity about what's happening. Stream all episodes of The Pacific (2010) online on iFILM.