When someone talked about this the other day I knew that it sounded familiar and it is a very interesting take on history. The premise behind it is that the Allies lost World War 2 and now the United States is divided into one part that is controlled by Nazis and the other part is controlled by the Japanese.
While even if WW2 had gone differently this outcome would have been extremely unlikely given the relatively remote nature of the USA in regards to the people they were fighting, it is an interesting concept for a series and one that I feel they almost did correctly. This Amazon Prime series is highly regarded and has one of the highest ratings on major review sites of any series currently running.
I am a very fickle consumer of entertainment though so I have a few problems with it, which I am certain anyone who regularly reads my stuff would probably assume is going to happen.
Keep in mind that I have only seen season 1, so this is not meant to be an overall review of the series as a whole
The series gets straight to the point and doesn't even show any expensive war footage but simply explains that the USA as well as the rest of the world, has basically been divided up as far as control is concerned between the Reich and Japan. There are some ominous maps that exist both in the series and some fan-made stuff that I found online.
There are still pockets of resistance as you would expect because there would be no story to tell here but it doesn't exactly go the way that you might expect. I enjoy how they showcase the fact that despite having won the great war, the Japanese and Nazi Germany have a very tepid relationship with one another and a large focus of the story is to showcase that there is no such thing as a "winner" in these sorts of conflicts. The two winning nations are constantly arguing with one another and seem to be on the verge of war even though they have reached an agreement. This is a bit reminiscent of how USA and Russia entered into the "Cold War" after WW2 despite being allies during it.
The idea of a neutral zone is a bit silly to me but it is rather important to the story. In my mind these unconquered areas would be easily conquered seeing as how almost all of them are land-locked and surrounded. The one exception being Russia, which may end up being a central focus later on in the series.
Overall it is relatively interesting story that has a lot of twists and turns, many of which you don't really see coming. I like this aspect of it. However, I do NOT like the fact that this series, which is 4, 10-episode seasons long, is intentionally drawn out a great deal longer than it needed to be. This is just so common with American series and it is a feature that continually annoys me about what otherwise could be absolutely fantastic shows.
The Philip K. Dick book that the entire story is based upon is a mere 240 pages long so how it is that they thought that it would be a good idea to make a 40-hour screen performance based on a book that you could read in a couple of days is just annoying to me. Again, I have only seen the first season and I intend to watch the rest of them, although I would say that I have less enthusiasm about doing so than I would have hoped. This is because in most of the episodes almost nothing of consequence happens. Instead we have extremely emotional reactions by mostly irrelevant characters and their petty arguments with one another just repeat over and over again.
The most annoying ones take place in the apartment that is shared by Juliana and Frank, who as far as I can tell are the main focus of the story thus far.
So many people just come wandering into this basement apartment where either illegal or of questionably legal activities are going on that I actually started shouting "lock your F**king door!" at the TV screen in my bedroom. I mean seriously, Frank wanders how at least a dozen times in season 1 to find yet another person just hanging out in his apartment and the visitor says "oh the door was open." Lock your door Frank... LOCK YOUR DOOR.
This is a minor gripe but I really can't stand it when stupid crap like this happens in any series. Frank and Juliane are very aware of the fact that what they are doing will get them in a lot of trouble but they just can't be bothered with the most basic security. It just irks me and there are so many ways that they could have done this better by like, having someone find them on the street or something.
For me, I like the idea behind the story here, although it takes on a more fantasy type plot in that there are film reels out there that the Nazis are desperately trying to obtain and destroy that show the Allies winning the war. There is almost certainly something supernatural going on here and thus far I am interested in seeing what that is. We are intentionally not given this information though and even though I already know what it is from having read the book, I am not going to reveal it to you. Let's just say that they keep putting off giving at least some clues as to what is going on that it becomes a bit maddening. I do a lot of "get on with it already!" when I am watching this because much like many other series that exist out there, they easily could have done all of this BBC style, by having the entire story told in a condensed sense over the course of say, 5 1-hour episodes.
I can only guess that they intentionally drag it out so that people will continue to subscribe to the streaming service. I believe all streaming services are losing money at the moment so I think they don't really have a choice. It doesn't mean I have to like it though.
There is an excruciating level of character development that goes on throughout season 1 and when I look at the cast in the wiki, there are entirely too many characters in this series. I find myself confused often when watching and will need to pause to remember who the hell this person on screen actually even is. I think they could have done a much better job with this because honestly, there are way too many characters in this and it becomes difficult to figure out who it is that we are actually supposed to be paying attention to.
Should I watch it?
Despite the almost complete positive reviews that this series gets I would urge a bit of caution in recommending it if you are like me and get annoyed with what I refer to as "filler" in a series. This could have easily been a single season and they made it much longer completely by design. I fear that things are going to get worse for me because while season one was almost entirely well-received, season two's approval dropped dramatically.
I think that if you are going to watch this that you better make sure you are in an environment where you will not be disturbed because while they go into vast detail about the story and all the characters, you will get confused and probably give up if it doesn't have your undivided attention. I cannot watch this in my living room and can only follow the story if I am in my bed with my phone in the other room. Even with this tunnel vision, I have fallen asleep in 2 different episodes because they just take ages to make anything of substance actually happen.
I was on the fence about whether or not to give this a "recommended" rating or a "maybe" and it was only while I was typing this that I decided that I will give it a
this is available on Amazon Prime exclusively
