Wednesday, October 31, 2018

The Man in the High Castle (TV series)

The Man in the High Castle (TV title).png

An alternative dystopian history show based on the novel of the same name by Phillip K. Dick where the Germans and Japanese won the Second World War, with the former occupying the former United States east of the Rocky Mountains as the Greater Nazi Reich and the latter controlling the lands west of the Rockies and dubbing them the Japanese Pacific States. The titular character is minor and played by Stephen Root, and created a series of films depicting real-life history called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, in contrast to the alternate-alternate history novel within Dick's book.

The characters aren't terribly memorable, but this reviewer definitely thought the series created a good atmosphere, although he somewhat prefers the version of Grasshopper within the novel depicting a superior history where FDR only served two terms as President, one of his brain trustees, Rexford Tugwell, succeeding him, entering World War II prepared and ending the conflict early, with other elements such as the Soviet Union prematurely collapsing and Jiang Jieshi (or Chiang Kai-shek depending upon your preferred style of Chinese) staying in control of China, America resolving its racial problems early too and getting into a civil cold war with the British Empire.

It probably wouldn't have made much of a difference who was the American President during the Second World War, since the U.S. for the most party pretty much remained neutral up until the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing, and the Nazis were defeated first and foremost by the Soviet Union, who destroyed an overwhelming percentage of their forces on the eastern front of Europe as opposed to the western front, with things such as D-Day occurring less than a year before the war ended. The third season of the show sees a growing resistance to America's occupiers, and ends with a forthcoming fourth season in the future.

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