#The man in the high castle tv
Game of Thrones, one of the richest worlds on TV today, takes great pains to remind us again and again that everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls. And while that’s a task at which The Man in the High Castle ultimately fails-its stakes are too high, its view of its heroes too myopic-it’s still a promising glimpse of a storytelling future in which characters’ lives reflect how creators can privilege different types of people. The best world-building gives us a sense that there are things happening outside of the lives of the main characters. Having different worlds, distinct worlds, isn’t just a thing that would be nice to have-it’s a necessity of a healthy narrative ecosystem. And let’s just agree not to talk about True Detective.
#The man in the high castle series
Fargo has thrilling moments, but doesn’t create a real place as much as a setting for a series of snappy action sequences with unnecessary split screen.
Though Ryan Murphy claims that every American Horror Story installment takes place in the same universe, each season buckles under the weight of campy, grotesque pointlessness. Anthology shows, which provide the best opportunity at a sense of texture, haven’t quite gotten to this point yet. MITHC’s is the kind of world that, for all that we claim to be in a Golden Age, simply doesn’t exist on TV in nearly the levels we’d like. Even shows with potentially rich genre settings, like the faux- Star Trek world of Yahoo’s dearly departed Other Space, often favor their characters over their milieu-it’s a narrative myopia that’s to the detriment of shows’ worlds.
It’s the kind of strangeness manifested in The Man in the High Castle’s perfectly pleasant Nazi neighborhood that has yet to fully be defined in the current prestige-TV landscape. Sensibilities might change, but never surroundings. The best series-like, say, *You’re the Worst-*do both, but too often they simply immerse viewers in a world that’s like ours. That’s partially because TV tends to focus on its characters more than their surroundings. Most of these people intuit that something is wrong with their world. The most important object in the show is a newsreel that depicts an alternate outcome in which the Allies won the war that’s because, as the characters yell repeatedly, it proves that things can be different (even if we're not quite sure how). Even the threat of outing someone as Jewish, or of having Jewish ancestry, causes tension.
Still, something is missing.Ī vague sense of paranoia permeates the universe-not that surprising, since the show’s very premise hinges on the Nazis having won World War II. The action sequences are tense and well-shot, even if the pacing can be rough. The others are at least committed to being good-looking and angstily earnest in the way in that CW way.
The cast is, generally speaking, good, particularly Rufus Sewell as SS officer John Smith and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa as weary Japanese official Nobusuke Tagomi. Dick’s alternate-history novel of the same name. Sure, there’s a lot to like about the show, adapted from Philip K. The series, which premiered on Amazon on Friday, has all of the signifiers of Quality TV Drama-a slow burn with just enough violence to keep audiences interested, mysterious characters, an extremely dark palette. The Man in the High Castle is a fine show fine as in sufficient, not as in excellent.