With the sleeper hit drama-thriller film Pressure debuting on the PVOD market this week, fans of WWII-era storytelling are spoiled for choice. Pressure entered its home video era after having overtaken the 2025 movie Nuremberg at the domestic box office. It will now compete for attention with an epic new documentary series that’s nearing the halfway mark of its 20-episode run. The show is executive-produced by arguably the most popular WWII aficionado in the world, the Oscar-winning movie star Tom Hanks, who has headlined popular WWII movies such as Saving Private Ryan and Greyhound over the course of his career. Along with director Steven Spielberg, Hanks has also executive-produced three landmark narrative series centered on the conflict.

The most recent of these three series, Masters of the Air, had a reported price tag of $250 million and was released on Apple TV in 2024. It was released over a decade after The Pacific, which was released on HBO in 2010. The first, and arguably most acclaimed series that Hanks and Spielberg produced was Band of Brothers, which was also released on HBO. It served as a companion piece to Saving Private Ryan, which had swept the Oscars only a few years prior. Hanks’ latest WWII project is unlike anything he has ever done in the genre. We’re talking, of course, about World War II with Tom Hanks, the documentary series on the History Channel.