The Man In The High Castle: Season One 2015

     This series is based on a novel by Philip K. Dick.  The premise of this film is that the Western Section of the United States is now controlled by the Japanese after WWII.  The Americans have lost the war and the Eastern Section is controlled by Germany.  There is a neutral zone separating the Western and Eastern zones.  The Japanese and the Germans have an uneasy peace between each other.  The Germans have supersonic planes and also an enriched uranium powered weapon of mass destruction so they have the advantage.  The Man in the High Castle is collecting film reels that show footage of WWII.  There is a resistance group that is smuggling the films to this Man.  Juliana Crain becomes part of this group when her sister Trudy is killed.  She meets Joe Blake and he is transporting one of the tapes.  Frank Frink is Juliana’s boyfriend and he works in a machine shop with Ed McCarthy.  Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith is in charge of German operations and the Trade Minister Nobusuke Togomi is high up in the Japanese organization.

     I thought this was very good and it’s difficult to just watch one episode at a time.  Sometimes I could figure out what was going to happen but other times it was a surprise.  There is a lot of secret activity happening in both of the States and we don’t know what it’s like in the neutral zone in this season.  We don’t know who the Man is in the High Castle and why he wants the tapes.  We don’t know where the tapes come from either.  What is true, what happened on the tapes or what is happening in their lives in the States?  There is a LOT of retribution for being outside of the law and it includes consequences to families as well.  5* (I really loved this series)

60 min, TV Series, 10 Episodes, Drama created by Frank Spotnitz with Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, Luke Kleintank, DJ Qualls, Joel de la Fuente, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Rufus Sewell, Lee Shorten, Chelah Horsdal.

Note:  Imdb 8.1 out of 10, 79% critic 89% audience, Metacritic 77% critic with 77 reviews 7.0 out of 10 user score with 266 ratings, Amazon 4.5* out of 5* with 104,697 reviews.  (Available on supported devices from Amazon)

Special Note:  The episode titles for this season are The New World, Sunrise, The Illustrated Woman, Revelations, The New Normal, Three Monkeys, Truth, End of the World, Kindness, A Way Out.

Special Note:  This series is listed for Mature Audiences and you can tell about each episode by the number of squares after the MA rating square.  If there are two squares for the rating it will be not too bad, if there are three squares, at least one person will be killed.  Filmed in Roslyn, Monroe and Seattle, Washington; New York City, New York; Vancouver, Coquitlam, New Westmister, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.