3. Generation Kill (2008)

Created by David Simon, Evan Wright and Ed Burns

Whilst the success of The Wire slowly became a post-mortem reality, David Simon expanded his TV adventures to a whole different area. In Generation Kill, he tells the story of the like named book, in which a group of marines are followed during the attack on Iraq in 2003. A Rolling Stone journalist travels with them to write a story on the team and it’s adventures.

The show brilliantly succeeds in capturing the raw reality of the army and the marine recon team. The series takes no stand in the question if attack is legitimate, or, if anything, war is a fair game. Generation Kill simply shows how this world works, how marines are simply guys doing their job, how companionship comes to being and what it means to be sent away to a country far away, fighting a war that is not your own. The fact that real marines confirmed the show’s realism underlines the writers’ ability to tell story in an ambiguous, truthful way. This also means not too much action: war appears to be a lot of waiting.