Explosive New Doc Series

The new G4 series Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan, sold by NBCUniversal International Television Distribution, follows the real-life work of the U.S. Navy’s Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) unit.

Straight from the streets of Afghanistan come the stories of those involved in one of the military’s most dangerous jobs, the U.S. Navy Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD). The members of the unit are experts in explosives, diving, parachuting and defusing and disposing of bombs, and their high-risk work is the focus of the new ten-part G4 series Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan.

From Big Fish Entertainment, the documentary series focuses on all aspects of an eight-man unit from the EOD during their five-month campaign in Afghanistan. Dan Cesareo, co-owner and executive producer at Big Fish, says the process for creating this ambitious series started back in January 2010, building off of an existing relationship with the Navy. “We started looking at what sort of opportunities existed to do some work with them,” Cesareo explains. “At the time, you couldn’t open up a newspaper or turn on the television without hearing or seeing something about IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] and it had become the dominant threat in the war in Afghanistan. As we started to dig in and look at the different platoons and people we could follow, we really honed in on EOD.”

Cesareo found the EOD particularly interesting because of its small size yet big purpose. “They have a very specific goal; every time they leave the wire, every time they go out on a mission, their success is completely measurable. They have the most dangerous job in the world—they go out and they defuse bombs for a living. They’re super smart and highly trained and they’re just really great guys. As soon as we met them it was a singular focus to get this project made.”

While the producers received the support and encouragement of the Navy, which granted them full access, it wasn’t an easy filming process by any means. Cesareo notes, “Never in a million years did we think that the access agreement was going to take seven months. We didn’t understand all the layers of approval that needed to happen so that we could embed a crew in Afghanistan for five months.”

Cesareo and fellow Big Fish co-owner and executive producer, Doug DePriest, put extra care in assembling the right film crew for the project. “We specifically went out looking for people who were comfortable shooting by themselves,” DePriest says. “We sent a crew of seven, and six of them were totally capable of fixing their own camera, running their own camera, telling a story. We did not go after news shooters or photojournalists who’d been in war zones before because we wanted a program that felt different than that; we didn’t want someone coming in with a perspective of having already covered a war.”

Filmmaker Vince DiPersio came on board the project to handle post-production. “We deployed in the first week of October, and the whole time we were looking for a showrunner to run post-production and really help shepherd this project in post,” explains Cesareo. “We had a tremendous amount of interest. We found Vince and he found us and the rest is history. When you look at his background and the type of work that he’s done and his care for characters and stories, with the design we had put together to shoot the series and the team we had put in the field to produce the series, it was a match made in heaven.”

DePriest say its was a leap of faith on both sides in the beginning, since DiPersio joined the series when some 4,000 hours of footage had already been shot but very little of it had actually been seen. “We were all assuming there was a story in there. We got fairly detailed reports from the field, and Dan and I were basically directing stories from afar. Vince really did not know what he was walking into. Vince has a phenomenal background but he had never told a story across ten hours. He came in and brought so much to the party for us and we were all willing to take this risk together and it’s just been a fantastic experience.”

The series garnered a lot of interest from various networks, and G4 was aggressive in competing for the show, says DePriest. This was a risk for the channel, he points out, since few details could be divulged because of the classified information involved in dealings with the Navy. “With EOD even their deployment days are classified, so we couldn’t tell the network when we were leaving; we didn’t even know when we were leaving,” DePriest adds. “Every element took a great deal of collaboration and faith on both parts.”

The series is narrated by Hollywood actor Josh Duhamel. More than 15 cameras, including both helmet and body mounted, were used to capture the action. The story starts as the platoon says farewell to their families and loved ones as they prepare for deployment. From there, the show follows the action as the elite teams are stationed in Northern Afghanistan, and the EOD patrols the battle zones dismantling explosives and responding to IED hunting and clearance requests.

Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan launched on G4 late last month for a ten-episode run. Whether or not Big Fish and G4 will continue with a second series is still up in the air. “Right now there’s a strong interest from all parties involved,” says Cesareo. “We’ll see where that ends up, but for us, it’s a phenomenal story. It’s intimate, the stakes couldn’t be any bigger and no one else is actually telling these stories.”