‘We didn’t come for your oil. We came to kick your ass!”
That’s a sergeant shouting at the enemy as he leads his troops into a firefight outside a mosque in Iraq. It’s one of many striking moments in the series premiere of “Over There.”
The new drama from Steven Bochco, creator of television classics “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue” and “LA Law,” debuts at 10 p.m. July 27 on cable’s FX Network.
“Over There” is a show that’s not so much enjoyed as admired. It is the first scripted TV show that’s set during a war currently being fought, and it’s sure to ruffle feathers on both sides of the debate over the war in Iraq.
Bochco says the show has no political agenda, and that any controversy will be “more about the agendas of the people who are stirring that pot” than anything else.
He’s right. It seems the battle that’s most important to everyone is the one that’s happening in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, thousands of soldiers are off in a desert halfway around the world hoping they aren’t the next ones to walk down the wrong street at the wrong time.
“Over There” was filmed in the desert near the southern California town of Lancaster, but it’s likely the most raw and certainly the most compelling view we’ll get of what’s happening in Iraq these days.
It isn’t about politics to the soldiers on the ground, and “Over There” isn’t about politics to Bochco.
“Our position, if you will, is that when your ass is on the block … you’re there to survive, you’re there to serve your country,” Bochco said in publicity materials. “And, as a soldier, you do what you’re told to do.”
The show tells the story of war through the eyes of a handful of soldiers as they embark on their first tour of duty in Iraq.
Soon after they arrive, the troops are in their first firefight, under the command of a sergeant who was supposed to go home the next day, but just found out he’ll be there another three months.
The battle scenes are both epic and personal, mixing all-out gunfire with the occasional moment of awareness a soldier feels when he’s just killed someone.
It’s often difficult to watch, both because of some graphic, violent images and because of how true it might be.
The show’s technical adviser, Staff Sgt. Sean Thomas Bunch of the U.S. Marine Corps, spent two tours in Iraq and put the actors through a mini-boot camp, refining the details of everything from how to hold a gun to what kinds of thoughts occupy a soldier’s mind on the battlefield.
No TV show could ever give us living-room dwellers the true sense of war. But when there’s an explosion and one of these soldiers sees the broken half of a comrade’s machine gun fall from the sky, you realize this fiction is all too real.
Victor Balta is on assignment at the TV Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles, filing daily dispatches on the fall TV season. E-mail him at vbalta@heraldnet.com.
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