FX Series OVER*THERE

FX has ordered a pilot from Steven Bochco Prods. for a series set on the front lines of the conflict in Iraq.

Bochco will serve as executive producer with Chris Gerolmo will director of the pilot he wrote. Other movies he has been involded with are Resurrecting the Champ, Citizen X, The Witness, Mississippi Burning, and Miles from home. The pilot marks the first collaboration between Bochco, the veteran producer of over 40 gritty series such as LA Law, LA Law The movie, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, Blind Justice, Murder One Diary of a Serial Killer, The Twilight Zone ect. ABOUT THE SHOW The first TV drama based on a war still in progress follows the trend of recent war movies where patriotism is a joke, leaders are corrupt, and idealism is a foolish illusion.

Over There (FX, Wednesdays, 10:00 p.m. ET), the new dramatic series about American soldiers fighting in Iraq, is supposedly neither pro-war nor anti-war. "I don't think you have to deal at all with the politics of it," producer Steven Bochco told HOLLYWOOD Reproter"Ultimately, a young man being shot at in a firefight has absolutely no interest in politics." Of the soldiers, he told The New York Times, "they're not fighting for an ideal, they're fighting to survive. It irises down to issues that are completely nonpolitical." But in my eyes to portray a war without any of its ideals is to portray that war as meaningless. If the reasons for the war are just "politics," if war is nothing more than a struggle for survival, who could support it? "Over There" is an ensemble drama that will explore the lives of a select group of Army soldiers in combat as well as the families they left behind. In accord with the anti-war movie cliché, it is yet to be knows if it is your typical war movie or if they will be true to us all in exsporing the three sides of the story. From the previews it is known that one of the men in the squad has the nickname "Doublewide," expressing the bigotry of the upper middle class for people who live in trailers. A bespectacled young soldier has the nickname "Dim" because he was a college student and thus "stupid to join the army." One soldier needs the GI Bill so he can go to college. Another had auditioned for a national choir, but when he failed, he enlisted to avoid facing the folks back home. Others are escaping bad family situations. One soldier does say, "I love the army," but his gung-ho attitude earns him scornful looks, and he will no doubt learn his lesson.

Ironically, even anti-war war stories exploit the action and excitement of war. This show has been the talk of the town and from what I have heard the combat scenes in Over There are excellent. Gun battles?with flashing machine guns from a mosque?are shown in the green light of night-vision goggles. The camera bounces along with the men as they run. Scope shots show the targets?enemies who silently fall when shot?putting the viewer behind the rifle. Over There is the first TV drama based on a war still in progress. But this did also happen in World War II, to keep up morale on the home front. Those movies are often dismissed today as propaganda.

I guess its up to the world to decide where this show is going HOME DVD Collections, or a THE BURRING RIOT CONTROVERSIAL PILE WITH OTHER WAR MOVIES / SHOWS!