I decided that I'm fortunate to live in Tom Hanks' world - because every time the guy does a good movie of a historical event, he takes the back story and turns it into a painstakingly accurate HBO series. Thus Saving Private Ryan begat Band of Brothers, but before that, Apollo 13 begat From the Earth to the Moon. (Which raises the tantalizing question of where we'd all be if Hanks had starred in Boogie Nights. Probably better not to ask...)
Anyway, I was initially disappointed in the series, since the episode intorductions (by Hanks) were a jarring reminder that this was Hollywood telling the story. Instead of BoB's opening narrated by the actual soldiers, making unclear whether this was a dramatic recreation or the real deal (hey, I can suspend disbelief when I want), each episode of FTETTM is opened by Hanks, followed by an interminable opening credits sequence. The music and the special effects pale in comparison to Apollo 13, and while there is nothing wrong with the episodes, and I learned a lot, they are (in my opinion) hampered (initially) by having every character played by a character actor that you know. And it was apparently a requirement that everybody have played somebody else on Apollo 13. And that no episode could include the dramatic high spots of any space mission - the launch, the landing, etc. But by the end of the second episode, as you get used to the rhythm of the series, and understand that it's not going to be Apollo 13 - the series, you start to see some standout work, including that by the guy playing Frank Borman, the woman playing his wife (okay, it's Hanks' wife and in black & white she's impossibly hot for the mother of two grown sons, but then again I saw a documentary on Apollo 8 not long ago and she was actually even hotter than that. And blonde.) And the unnatural focus of the guy playing Neil Armstrong piloting a Gemini mission, or the obsession of Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 13 (and all this time I thought Michael Collins was the guy with the reason to have issues), and so on and so on. The series really kicked into high gear with Apollo 12, which was I later read the best-rated of the episodes, and which was just what we space nuts wanted to see - three guys that understand where they were and were enjoying it like you thought they should. The lunar landscape work (including an uncredited appearance by the real-life Apollo 18 lunar module - I just saw the rest of the Apollo 18 spacecraft in Houston and there was a noticeable gap where that bug should have been) was phenomenal, and I ended up really looking forward to the episodes towards the end, including watching as the astronauts learned to be geologists.
The series wasn't perfect, but it was very enjoyable, and I bet I'll it be even more the second time, when I realize what is and isn't coming. It's a really fine piece of work. Now if I could just convince Hanks to play Raymond Spruance at Midway, we could get not only an accurate remake of Midway, but a HBO series about the Pacific War. Tom, are you reading this? Tom?