Friday, November 27, 2015

'The Man in The High Castle' is pretty good.

I haven't really watched that many drama shows over the last few years. There haven't been shows that had a premise that was interesting or compelling enough, so it was pretty easy not to get involved with any of them.

Fortunately last week I noticed that there's a science fiction series called 'The Man in The High Castle' out there. Since it was based on Philip K. Dick's novel and was about the victorious Nazis after the second World War, it was something that I had to check out.

So far I have managed to watch the first five episodes of the series, and I have to say that mostly I've been pleasantly surprised. As far as I'm concerned, 'The Man in The Castle' is a pretty well made show that has managed to keep me interested.

One of the biggest reasons why I've liked watching the series is that it poses the question 'what if the Nazis had won the second World War?'. What if they would have managed to produce the a-bomb in time that would have given them the victory?

As is usually the case with other shows in this genre, 'The Man in The High Castle' is also about the brave resistance members, that are now trying to fight the alliance between the Nazis and the Japanese in the occupied United States.

The show takes place during the sixties in the U.S, where our two main characters find themselves in a challenging situation - trying to figure out a secret that might help the resistance forces change the course of the history.

In this case we're talking about 'a man in the castle', a mysterious person who has managed to produce underground films, that are said to be so dangerous that in the right (or wrong) hands they could even destroy the Nazis and the Japanese.

The storylines on 'The Man in The High Castle' are derived from this premise. We have the brave resistance fighters, the nazis with their Obergruppenführer and the Japanese with their military intelligence all trying to accomplish their goals.

The resistance fighters try to get back their country, the nazis aren't happy with their alliance with the Japanese, and the Japanese are aware that the Germans might double-cross them and use the bomb at any given minute.

In my opinion, 'The Man in The High Castle' does a very good job in creating a world that is both intriguing and believable. The show manages to keep the stakes high and makes me want to come back for more to see what happens next.

The production values of the series are pretty good too. At least in my opinion it's great to go back in time and look how things 'used' to be during the sixties. Clearly the people on the show paid a lot of attention to the details.

I also like most of the characters on the show. Even though there aren't necessarily any stand-out roles - D.J. Qualls likely being my favorite - as a whole I think the ensemble does a pretty good job and doesn't disappoint.

When it comes to the storylines, it's true that 'The Man in The High Castle' is a bit slow when it comes to its story progression. There are scenes here and there that aren't probably that crucial or that necessary.

Yet, despite some of these minor problems with storytelling, in my opinion these flaws don't weigh the series down too much. There's still lots of fascinating stuff for those who are interested in historical science fiction.

I suppose 'The Man in The High Castle' could have been even better than it is, but overall I feel that they did a pretty good job here. There aren't that many good science fiction dramas out there, but this series is one of them.

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