Yep. But in Band of Brothers the GIs were worried about being sent there.
At the risk of stretching the definition, I’ll suggest James May, Our Man In Japan and Ewan McGregor’s Long Way Round.
The first installments of these shows were really good. The follow-up seasons were okay but I felt there was a slight drop off in execution.
Roots was a massive success but QBVII and Rich Man, Poor Man both came before it.
When I was a teen I wasn’t much into long form dramas for my entertainment, but there was one that, despite everything, had me enjoying it from start to finish. It was from Australia, and was called All The Rivers Run starring Sigrid Thornton and John Waters, about Paddle Steamer Riverboats on the Murray River.
Only a few days ago I watched a YouTube piece about the profound differences between the 2004 and 2025 series of Ewan McGregor’s travels - We’ve Forgotten how to Travel
It is on one of my favorite YouTube channels, Dutch creator Tom van der Linden’s often deeply philosophical musings about movies at Like Stories of Old.
His recent review, I Watched MAGA’s Favorite Movie, in which he tears apart Citizen Vigilante, delivers, at the end, a lovely succinct assessment of the thinking that has trapped its fans.
I’m surprised this one hasn’t been mentioned much. Yes, I liked Roots, and a few others that have been mentioned, but this one grabbed me from the get-go. I had read the Stephen King novel, and I was glad to see that the miniseries was pretty faithful to the book.
I had no problem with Molly Ringwald; in fact, I think all the casting was perfect. Everybody fit their roles well. Rob Lowe played his role perfectly, until he could hear and speak in dreams; Ray Walston was great as the college professor from New Hampshire; and nice, friendly, happy Jamey Sheridan as Randall Flagg could turn evil in an instant.
Heck, I may have to dig out my DVDs of this miniseries, just to watch it again. M-O-O-N, that spells DVD!
Been looking for Rich Man, Poor Man but it is only available on DVD. I need to go to my library and have them order it for me.
I don’t recall QB VII at all. Maybe I’ll check it out.
It was a courtroom story based on a novel by Leon Uris. It had Anthony Hopkins and Ben Gazzara in the two lead roles.
I can’t believe it’s taken so long to mention Rich Man, Poor Man !!! It made Nick Nolte a star! (my husband was reading the book while the show was on and he got so upset at the show’s ending he threw the book right into the trash!) …
What about the PBS series, Masterpiece Theater? Do they count? Poldark? Upstairs, Downstairs? Dutchess of Duke Street? maybe not, but they were must-see tv here.
It’ll always be I, Claudius for me. It was responsible for most of my misconceptions of Roman history, but what an epic!
Those are just repackaged British miniseries.
Wouldn’t you be? 
It was good, but it differed considerably from the novel.
I use quotes from the series constantly. I saw it in England when it was first run toward the end of 1976. A lot of stuff was cut from the PBS version to avoid upsetting the tender sensibilities of the American audience. 
I will repeat much of what has been said here like The Stand, Roots, and Chernobyl. I have seen all of them multiple times and every so often and they are all very good.
The miniseries that featured The Hatfields and The McCoys was also very good and featured Kevin Costner in the role of the head Hatfield guy.
But I have one mini series that has not been mentioned so far and it’s my favorite absolute one, it’s also one of my top 10 movies of all time ever since I first saw it in 1996 when it was shown on TNT. Since then I have rewatched it once per year and have even recommended it and watched it with at least four other people, all who have loved it.
Unfortunately, this mini series is not easy to find anymore, I think you can order it on DVD from Amazon, but other than that I only know it exists on another website that I won’t name here, because I don’t think it’s on there legally… Plus it’s not the best way to watch movies anyway.
ETA oh, apparently it’s also on Amazon prime to rent for 3.99.
But that movie is called Andersonville. Amazing movie if you can ever get your hands on it and find it somewhere to watch. Truly amazing movie and I probably seen it once a year since 1996 so do the math.
Interesting side note, Andersonville is also the only other movie I have seen that stars Thomas F Wilson, AKA Biff from Back to the Future. It’s actually my favorite movie he is in which is weird because fans who approach him today probably never talk about that movie and they only talk about Back to the Future. If I ever met him though, Andersonville is the very first thing I would go on about.
My bolding. Is it a movie or a miniseries?
Really? I saw it on its first Masterpiece Theater run and it may have been the first boobs I ever saw on TV.
It’s a mini series. I’m counting the whole thing as one movie though, I don’t think that’s illogical to do. I know what a miniseries means, trust me. It’s a mini series.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115097/
It was shown over two nights on TNT in 1996 but if you watch it anywhere they’re going to combine the two parts so it becomes one movie, pretty much.
I grew up in the 1970s, the golden age of broadcast network miniseries (Roots, Shogun, the Winds of War, etc.) so I don’t know which I’d consider my favorite. Roots seemed to kickstart widespread interest in genealogical research among average Americans. I liked the traditional Japanese architecture shown in Shogun.
But one I remember was the 1989 six-part series Traffik, about the illegal drugs trade, showing the perspective of poor Afghan and Pakistani opium growers, the gangsters manufacturing the opium from the poppies, Germans in the trade and the British minister combatting the illegal importation of heroin, whose daughter was addicted. I remember that it included actual scenes of the processing of the drug in Afghanistan.