What’s the name of the show? The Man in the High Castle
That sure is a mouthful. When does it premiere? All 10 episodes are currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
That title sounds familiar. Was it a book? Yes, it was a novel by Philip K Dick.
Hasn’t everything the man wrote been adapted already? It sure seems like it, but there is still this project. Frank Spotnitz, best know for working on The X-Filesand its spin-off The Lone Gunmen, adapted it for television.
What’s the show about? It’s 1962 and the axis powers won the second world war by dropping an atom bomb on Washington DC. Subsequently the US was divided in two: Germany was given everything to the east of the Rocky Mountains and Japan took the land to the west. The area along the mountain range is known as the neutral zone.
When a young woman in San Francisco, Juliana Crane (Alexa Davalos), winds up with an illegal film that depicts the allied powers winning the war, she goes on a quest to figure out what to do with it. Her artistic boyfriend Frank (Rupert Evans) is left behind to deal with the authorities, especially SS officer John Smith (Rufus Sewell). Juliana heads to the lawless neutral zone, where she meets up with Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank), who just signed up with the resistance in New York and is carting some mysterious cargo. Meanwhile the alliance between Tokyo and Berlin is starting to fracture, and we see how that is being handled in the highest echelons of power.
Who is this High Tower guy? He’s the one making the subsversive films and the Führer is obsessed with stopping him.
Wait a minute. Doesn’t that mean that by showing a world in which the Nazis won the war, we’re supposed to imagine a world where fascism is possible and want to fight for that? That is the logical conclusion of this line of thinking, yes. But no one wants to live under the Nazis. We’re all just trying to go back in time tokill baby Hitler.What’s the big deal with the illegal movies? The philosophy in the show goes that showing people an alternative history will open up their minds to what the world could be like and they’ll want to shake off their oppressors and fight for freedom.
Is the show any good? The parallel universe is immediately gripping and well thought out. The depiction of how society would have evolved under the Nazis is simultaneously obvious and somehow surprising. For instance, there is a U-Bahn in New York and San Francisco is crammed with Japanese businesses, especially since Tokyo has become the world center for commerce. Also, it looks fantastic – slick, pretty and sinister.
The plot is complex and always intriguing, although sometimes there’s too much going on. Rightly, it doesn’t spoonfeed the viewers by trying to explain every little thing, but it’s challenging. When trying to navigate a strange land, some assistance in differentiating one agency from the next and providing some information about how the political structure works might benefit the plot a little. Also, since agents keep changing sides, it’s hard to keep track of who works for whom or where any given character’s allegiance lies at any given time.
What’s the most confusing part? Nobusuke Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) is a Japanese trade minister who is trying to prevent a war between Japan and Germany after the Führer, who is gravely ill, dies. He’s doing this with the help of a member of the German intelligence community ... and that’s about as much as I could figure out.
Joe and Juliana are totally going to fall in love, aren’t they? It’s sure looking that way. Even one of the most surprising and original series to come along in a while can still be painfully obvious.
Should I watch this show? Not only should you watch it, you should binge it. There is nothing on the week of Thanksgiving anyway, so let yourself get immersed in this world and see where it takes you. I ripped through the first six episodes and can’t wait to see how it ends.
Sports Betting 101 | Best online sportsbooks in the USA | Sporting100
ReplyDeleteSports betting is growing in popularity across the USA, offering betting on sports events 토토 사이트 도메인 from across the US. Find out about the best sportsbooks in the USA today.