HBO's From the Earth to the Moon is still the best retelling of the Apollo space program

Vox

The 12-part miniseries from Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer arrived in spring of 1998, which was HBO's breakout year. In honor of the moon landing's 50th anniversary, HBO has released a new remastered edition of From the Earth to the Moon. "What’s interesting about From the Earth to the Moon is how different it is from almost any miniseries that would be made today," says Emily Todd VanDerWerff. "Yes, certain actors recur as certain characters. But the series is, by and large, defined by how every episode focuses on the story of Apollo from a completely new perspective. Take, for instance, the second hour (probably the best installment of the series), which is scripted by the wonderful TV writer Graham Yost and directed by longtime TV hand David Frankel. Its subject is putatively the Apollo 1 disaster, in which three astronauts burned to death in their capsule before the rocket had even launched. But rather than portray this tragedy as a visceral, gory horror, Yost and Frankel look away from it, choosing to instead depict the government inquiry into what happened. It’s not a disaster movie; it’s a mystery. And by making that shift, events we might have already known about become fresh and new to us."