Amazon.com has released eight pilot TV shows on its website. There is one great show among the lot — The Man in the High Castle.
REPORT: What if the Allies had lost World War II, the Nazis had been first to develop the atomic bomb, and the Germans and Japanese had carved up control of United States? That’s the premise of the new streaming series from Amazon, The Man in the High Castle — an adaptation of the 1962 book by the same name. And the show is fantastic.
Nazi brownshirts control New York City streets, San Francisco is lorded over by Japanese police, and postwar TV game shows prominently feature Nazis in full regalia. The people of the United States seem to more or less accept their fate. Except, of course, for a band of freedom fighters not content with the way that their former enemies rule this alt-America with an iron fist.
The new series is a dark and moody portrait of an America that could have been. And I really can’t get enough. The production design is wonderful, the cinematography is phenomenal, and the acting is superb. The Man in the High Castle truly seems to transcend the pitfalls of so much genre fiction by letting the new world wash over you rather than scream that things aren’t right with the space that these characters inhabit.
