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The biggest compliment I can give HBO's momentous 10-part miniseries "The Pacific" is that it is a worthy companion piece to "Band of Brothers."

That 2001 HBO miniseries about the 101st Airborne's hellish journey through the European campaign of World War II was one of the greatest television accomplishments in the past decade.

"The Pacific" is almost as good -- it's a vast, riveting, often horrifying odyssey through ghastly conflicts.

While the new 10-hour miniseries, which begins tonight at 10 on HBO and continues every Sunday through May 16, is an epic, bloodier presentation than "Band of Brothers" with bigger battles and more gruesome scenes. Yet the series, also produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman (who won Emmys for "Band of Brothers"), still wisely controls its scope to focus on the intimate stories of three real-life men whom the war impacted.

Based on four memoirs, "The Pacific" follows three men in different units whose paths only briefly cross.

It begins with Pvt. Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), a hardened Marine who lands on Guadalcanal, the setting of a ferocious battle against the Japanese. Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello) is a private from Alabama who desperately wants to join the war and becomes a changed man after experiencing bloody fights on the island of Peleliu. Meanwhile, John Basilone (John Seda) is a veteran of Guadalcanal who is recruited for a different job: He is sent home as a war hero who helps sell war bonds.

The fight against the Japanese was particularly harsh (but then again, how does one rate degrees of brutality in war?). The soldiers there encountered jungle warfare, vicious hand-to-hand combat, deadly disease and unbearable heat, humidity and rain. It was as much a war against the elements as it was against an enemy.

"The Pacific" is an unflinching re-creation of that campaign, as American soldiers dodged bullets from every direction while battling thirst, exhaustion and uncontrollable fear.

There are minor moments of war-movie clichés in the first few hours -- the occasional wartime romance that feels old-fashioned, for example -- but perhaps "The Pacific's" biggest weakness is a fault that's impossible to avoid. While "Band of Brothers' " biggest asset was interspersing interviews with the real-life soldiers into the dramatization, "The Pacific" was unable to do that because the primary characters in this miniseries have since passed.

That mix of real recollections with dramatic re-creations in "Band of Brothers" made their experiences resonate profoundly, the interviews serving as a constant reminder that the veterans' sacrifices and heartbreak still haunted them.

But "The Pacific," in all its scope, bravery and anguish, tells a story of real events. As it depicts ordinary men asked to perform unthinkable acts to stay alive and win the war, "The Pacific" honors its characters by refusing to sugarcoat their experiences.

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