Amazon is riding high with its righteous Golden Globe wins for its comedy series “Transparent” and a new deal with Woody Allen. And far be it from me to be a downer, but let’s all try to keep our heads.
Only one of six shows that debuted Thursday shows any promise.
That would be “The Man in the High Castle,” the long-awaited adaptation of the Philip Dick novel of the same name, championed by Ridley Scott and partially filmed in Snohomish County.
As did the book, “The Man in the High Castle” imagines the United States just after World War II has been won, this time by the Axis powers. With Germany apparently the only country in possession of atomic firepower, the eastern half of the country is ruled by the Third Reich, the western by Imperial Japan; a swath of border states serves as a “neutral zone.”
It’s an upsetting, if provocative premise, smartly adapted by “The X-Files’” Frank Spotnitz and one made glorious by sets and cinematography worthy of a Scott production. In the East, we follow the travails of Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank), who joins the resistance and is tasked with driving a mysterious package across country. In the West, we meet Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) a young martial arts expert thrust into the underground by her sister and her degenerate-artist lover Frank (Rupert Evans).
As bad as things are, they’re about to get worse. Hitler is suffering from Parkinson’s, and the only thing his potential successors agree on is that cohabitation with Japan must end, even if it means nuking the West Coast.
Although director David Semel gives the pilot a dreamlike quality, the implications of this alternate history are disturbing, often to the point of distraction. But in a landscape obsessed with post-apocalyptic tales, it does raise the question: How real will we let ourselves get?
Mary McNamara. Los Angeles Times
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