2008 Summer Arts Preview

Airs July 13 on HBO

The war in Iraq, its critics contend, was not just a human tragedy but a massive waste of resources for diminishing returns. The war has had a similar effect in Hollywood, where the war has produced one nobly-intentioned box-office failure after another (not to mention FX's dud Over There in 2005). Can HBO succeed where the big screen has failed? Maybe, if only because pay-cable audiences have proved willing to pay subscription fees to watch the kind of challenging, socially conscious storytelling — from The Sopranos to Weeds — that the movies have had poorer luck with. And if you're going to do challenging, socially conscious and Iraq, you can't ask for a better producer than David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire, a cop show that also happened to be a critique of pretty much every major institution in American life. Here Simon turns his critical eye to a seven-part miniseries adaptation of Evan Wright's chronicle of life with the Marines during the 2003 invasion. It could just conquer new ground for TV treatments of ongoing wars.