The Pacific

It's a 10-part miniseries, follows U.S. Marines as they advance across the Pacific theater of World War II, beginning with the landing on Guadalcanal in 1942 and continuing until the war's end in 1945. It's told principally through the eyes of three enlisted men: John Basilone (Jon Seda), Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) and Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello), whose paths crossed during the campaign. The series is based in part on memoirs by Leckie ("Helmet for My Pillow") and Sledge ("With the Old Breed").

On the large scale, "The Pacific" does a frighteningly good job at depicting the brutal conditions not just in battle, but also in day-to-day life in locations like Guadalcanal, New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa. Intense heat, unrelenting rain, inadequate ammunition and supplies and the fatigue and illness that come with it -- to say nothing of a dug-in, relentless enemy -- wore these soldiers down to the point that they became shadows of their former selves.