Based on Phillip K. Dick’s award-winning, alternate-reality novel, Amazon’s new series, “The Man in the High Castle” presents the unsettling prospect of the Axis forces having won World War II, with a down-the-line focus, circa 1962.
The result of the Axis victory (finalized by an A-bomb on D.C.) has created a shared U.S., with Germany controlling the east and Japan the west. A Resistance opposes both forces, but there also exists an underlying friction between Germany and Japan: a prospect that the former may attack the latter upon Hitler’s demise.
Produced by Frank Spotiniz and Ridley Scott;
directed by Spotiniz and written by David Semel, the series' principles are Alexa Davalos as
Juliana Crain; Rupert Evans as Frank Frink; and Luke Kleintank as Joe Blake.
Crain possesses a film strip that her sister obtained prior to her death, and Blake is a truck driver, who expresses Resistance sympathy, but he also harbors a secret. Rounding out the fine cast is Brennan Brown; Arnold Chun; Joel de la Fuente; DJ Qualls; Daniel Roebuck; Carsten Norgaard; Rufus Sewell; and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa; with other competent performers also on board.
Crain possesses a film strip that her sister obtained prior to her death, and Blake is a truck driver, who expresses Resistance sympathy, but he also harbors a secret. Rounding out the fine cast is Brennan Brown; Arnold Chun; Joel de la Fuente; DJ Qualls; Daniel Roebuck; Carsten Norgaard; Rufus Sewell; and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa; with other competent performers also on board.
Crain’s film shows the Allies winning the war. Is the
footage a propagandist ruse? Crain’s boyfriend (Evans) believes it is, attributing the work to the enigmatic Man in the High
Castle...whomever he may be.
Amazon premiered the series' first two episodes in late October,
but the official stretch starts on November 20, with all episodes available for viewing at such time.
From the start, the series prompts us to question what would have fallen through the cracks if the opposing forces had won. Imagine a world weighed by prevailing anti-Semitism, that's bypassed Elvis, the Beatles, Godzilla, Jack Kerouac, Martin Luther King; a world where our most basic, taken-for-granted freedoms are outlawed. It’s a chilling concept dosed in espionage, Orwellian set-ups and the profound notion that "Evil triumphs only when good men do nothing."
I’ll report on the show's progress via replies. I must say, for the long haul, this
one looks most promising.
