The cast of Band of Brothers stand in a row amidst rubble, looking at the camera wearing military uniforms.
War TV shows are more accessible than ever before, thanks to the rise of streaming platforms and on-demand viewing. Even though it's a genre more commonly explored in cinema, war-themed TV shows still exist, retelling the darkest moments of history before the audience's very eyes.
But TV series can sometimes take a lot of commitment, and people might not have the time to commit to a long-running series. Fortunately, lots of war TV shows don't run for very long, which means plenty of them can be finished in under a week, even if you're working full-time. By just watching an episode or two a day, maybe ramping things up a bit on a weekend or a day off, one can knock these shows back and still have time for everything else. These are the best war TV shows that can be finished in just a week. 10 'The White Queen' The White Queen is based on a novel of the same name by Philippa Gregory, and is a piece of historical fiction set during the Wars of the Roses. This conflict, which occurred in the 15th Century, was a period of civil war in England, with two noble houses violently competing for the throne. But this series doesn't focus on the battles and the clashing of sword and shield. This is more of a political drama, taking viewers behind the scenes of the conflict, following the women of the opposing royal houses. These women, who are all based on real historical figures, manipulated things in secret, executing a series of daring political maneuvers to ensure victory for their houses. It really shines a light on a part of history that often gets ignored. What's more, with it being a miniseries, it's totally possible to knock it back in a week, if not a few short days. 9 'Masters of the Air' Masters of the Air takes audiences back to the Second World War, flying them high above the Western Front for a series of daring bombing raids. This series features some of the most famous moments of the war, only from a new perspective, allowing the audience to take a step back from the action on the ground and witness a whole new battlefield thousands of feet in the air. One might think that being in a plane is much safer than being on the ground, but they'd be wrong. Being in the air actually presents a whole new set of hazards that most TV shows don't bother to show, which can be just as chaotic as ground combat. Aside from being emotional and really nailing the brotherhood dynamic, Masters of the Air is a miniseries, which means it's easy to pace yourself and watch in just seven days. 8 'SAS: Rogue Heroes' The Special Air Service, or the SAS for short, is one of the oldest special forces groups in the world. As part of the British Armed Forces, the SAS was formed in Northern Africa during World War II, but today it is used to carry out global counter-terrorism operations. SAS: Rogue Heroes is set during the Second World War, exploring the origins of the unit. Most of the unit's early missions were sabotage operations on Axis installations throughout the Sahara, which earned the SAS its reputation. Today, they are one of the most famous, most elite, and most secretive Tier One spec ops units in the world, so it's exciting to watch the unit's formation depicted in a more glamorous way. This series currently sits at two seasons, with a third on the way. However, with only 12 episodes, it's totally feasible to finish in under a week. 7 'Chief of War' Chief of War is a real passion project for actor Jason Momoa, who both co-created, co-produced, and starred in the series. Owing to his Hawaiian roots, the series follows a civil conflict throughout the four Hawaiian kingdoms prior to the archipelago joining the United States of America. Set in the 18th Century, Momoa stars as historical warrior Ka'iana, a warchief who begins a campaign to unite Hawaii under the rule of King Kamehameha I . What makes this series so interesting is that this conflict has probably never been portrayed on screen before, proving just how much of history is often forgotten. It's not just about an overlooked part of history, but the series feels extremely authentic, bearing an all-Hawaiian cast, and even having a Hawaiian language version. So far, it's only one season long, which means it's super easy to finish in just one week.Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one. 🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → QUESTION 1 / 10TONE 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind. ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 2 / 10THEME 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours? AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 3 / 10STRUCTURE 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means. AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 4 / 10VILLAIN 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you? AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 5 / 10ENDING 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like? AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 6 / 10WORLD 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 7 / 10CRAFT 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 8 / 10PROTAGONIST 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 9 / 10PACE 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 10 / 10AFTERMATH 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days. REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is… Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. BEST PICTURE 2020 Parasite You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. BEST PICTURE 2023 Everything Everywhere All at Once You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. BEST PICTURE 2024 Oppenheimer You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort. BEST PICTURE 2015 Birdman You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. BEST PICTURE 2008 No Country for Old Men You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 6 'Barbarians' Barbarians is a German Netflix series set in the early First Century CE, when the Roman Empire began a large-scale conquest of present-day Germany. At the time, the Germanic region was inhabited by a series of tribes, which were often at war with each other. Of these tribes, the Teutons are perhaps the most famous. However, upon the Roman invasion, the Germanic tribes put aside their differences to fight back, and famously gave the Romans a really hard time. Barbarians even depicts the famous Battle of Teutoburg Forest, in which the Romans suffered a catastrophic defeat. This battle was so iconic that"Teutoburg" is often used as a metaphor for an insurmountable task or a disastrous defeat. Considering how disciplined the Romans were, and how much of Europe, Africa, and Asia they conquered, defeating them was no small victory. In any event, this historical series is fantastic, and it only has 12 episodes, making it easy to binge in just one week. 5 'Rome' Another series about Ancient Rome, Rome focuses on Caesar's Civil War, which occurred in Egypt in the First Century BCE. This conflict pitted the last of the pharaohs, Queen Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII, against each other, along with warring factions of the Roman Republic. This conflict ultimately led to the collapse of Ancient Egypt and its assimilation into the budding Roman Empire. However, the focus on the conflict only really happens in the second season. Much of the show is mostly about politics and such, but it does feature quite a bit of gruesome action at the same time. Most of the characters in the show are based on real people, making it a thrilling historical recreation, if with some expected inaccuracies. The show boasts 22 episodes, but it's still possible to cram the whole thing into one short week. 4 'Generation Kill' Generation Kill is based on a memoir by American journalist Evan Wright, who appears in the show, played by Lee Tergesen. Wright spent time embedded with an American military unit during the Iraq War, which was still ongoing at the time of the TV show's release. Generation Kill really made waves because it addressed a sensitive topic and brought the war home to American audiences, letting them fully experience the horror of it. The combat is fast and chaotic, reflecting the brutality of 21st-century warfare and modern weaponry, but it also raises a lot of important political questions about the United States' invasion of Iraq and the atrocities committed there. This miniseries is truly a masterpiece, one that wasn't afraid to tell the story it needed to tell without dumbing anything down. If one can stomach the mayhem of its combat sequences, they can easily finish the show in just a few short days. 3 'Shōgun' Shōgun is based on a novel of the same name by James Clavell, and is actually completely fictional. None of the characters in the story is real, and the events are pure fabrications, although they were all based on very real figures and happenings. Even though the story is fictitious, the novel and this TV show did get critical acclaim for how they captured the political climate and the dangers of Japan during the Edo Period, also known as the Feudal Era. Subscribe to the newsletter for curated war TV picks and more Want more curated picks? Subscribe to the newsletter for thoughtful, respectful recommendations and historical context on bingeable war and related historical dramas—concise, watch-ready lists to help you choose the right limited series to watch. Get Updates By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime. The Edo Period was marked by constant civil war, societal unrest, and political upheaval, and was the golden age of the famed samurai. As such, the show's premise became attractive to many, earning it critical acclaim. It was actually received so well that the planned miniseries is set to receive a second season, extrapolating upon the novel's story. There are currently only eight episodes, but if Season 2 follows suit, it will still be possible to binge it in a week. 2 'The Pacific' The Pacific is set during the Second World War, but don't expect to see the battlefields of Europe here. It is called The Pacific, after all. No, this series instead follows American ground forces as they battle their way across the Pacific, combating the Japanese Empire's island-hopping campaign across Asia and Oceania. This series features many famous battles of the Pacific Theater, from the Battle of Peleliu in present-day Palau to the invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa. The thick jungle and murky swamps make the battlefields extra dangerous, with Japanese guerrilla warfare reigning supreme against America's superior numbers and firepower. It's brutally violent, but action-packed, and is easy to finish in just a few days. 1 'Band of Brothers' Band of Brothers is the definitive TV war drama and is one of the most famous TV series ever created. The series follows Easy Company of the US Army's 101st Airborne Division, paratroopers who fought in some of the most famous and deadly battles throughout the Second World War. The audience is taken through the most heroic moments of the war's Western Front, from the D-Day landings to the Battle of the Bulge. What made this show special was that it also featured interviews from real veterans of the 101st Airborne, who talked about their experience jumping out of planes and landing in the middle of Hell itself. It's a brutal, violent show, but one that hits in all the right places, emotionally. It's an all-time classic, and it's a limited series to boot, meaning it's not just perfect, but it's easy to finish in a few days. Band of Brothers Like Follow Followed TV-MA Drama War & Politics Action War Release Date 2001 - 2001 Network HBO Showrunner Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks Directors David Frankel, David Nutter, Mikael Salomon, Phil Alden Robinson, Richard Loncraine, Tom Hanks Writers Bruce C. McKenna, Graham Yost, John Orloff Cast See All The story of Easy Company of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division and their mission in World War II Europe, from Operation Overlord to V-J Day.
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