PASADENA, Calif. - The Iraq War continues to command the attention of TV drama writers, most notably with FX's short-lived "Over There" and HBO's "Generation Kill" miniseries last year.
Now BBC America enters the fray with the two-part "Occupation" (part one at 8 and part two at 10 p.m. EDT Sunday), the story of three British soldiers who find it difficult to return to their civilian lives. All three go back to Iraq.
Sgt. Mike Swift (James Nesbitt, "Jekyll") returns for the love of an Iraqi doctor. Cpl. Danny Peterson (Stephen Graham) returns to earn cash by setting up a private security firm. Lance Cpl. Lee Hibbs (Warren Brown, "Shameless") goes back because he passionately believes in the mission to rebuild the country and help its people.
At a BBC America press conference in July, writer Peter Bowker ("Viva Blackpool") was quick to say that "Occupation" is not only set during the war but also afterward.
"I think the themes are fairly universal," he said. "I think it's about love and it's about what it is to be a man. And it's about doing the right things for the wrong reasons. And the wrong things for the right reasons."
Bowker said "The Deer Hunter" was an inspiration for "Occupation" because he noticed in "Deer Hunter" how little time was spent in Vietnam.
"As a writer, ultimately for me what happens afterwards is a far more interesting dramatic field than actually what happens during wartime," he said.
Nesbitt said "Occupation" shows how in some bizarre respects soldiers feel an odd sense of security when in a war zone.
"They are more comfortable in their uniforms, I think, than they are in their civvies," he said. "We are not really trained to be humans. And I think that the rhythm that war gives them with the camaraderie which we discovered was so important to them, that they can confide in each other, that they are completely together, is in stark contrast to them coming away from that situation, losing the uniform, going back into a family life where they feel terribly displaced because of what they've seen and what they've gone through."
Nesbitt said his character can't share his experience with his wife.
"In our piece quite early on you see when my character comes home he just doesn't know how to be with his family," he said. "They don't know how to react. It was something about the human element of the impact of war that it has on the families that struck me as something that I think is and will hopefully be universal."
"Occupation" filmed its Iraq scenes in Morocco, Bowker said, and unlike FX's "Over There," which was intended to be a series that would run for several seasons, he never wanted to make "Occupation" anything more than a miniseries.
"I just think different stories lend themselves to different shapes," he said. "With this one, one of the first things I knew is how it ended, which is never a great sign if you try to write a long runner. So this just suggested that shape. I think there is more of a tradition in British TV that you tell big intense stories only in the serial or one-off form. And I think over here (in America) that's not been the case."
(E-mail Rob Owen at rowen(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)
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