When HBO debuted Band of Brothers in 2001, it was an event — prestige television’s answer to the question, “What if Saving Private Ryan were 10 hours long and based on the experiences of real people?”

Executive-produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg and based on a bestselling book by Stephen Ambrose, the miniseries followed the men of Easy Company, 101st Airborne, from their paratrooper training in Georgia to their taking of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. Two days after the show’s premiere, which drew 10 million viewers, the 9/11 attacks occurred, perhaps injecting the show’s themes of patriotism and sacrifice with new gravity. The Pacific, which followed in 2010 and applied a similar conceit to the Pacific theater, was even grittier and darker, to the point of being a bit polarizing.