Man in the High Castle

The forbidden book of the novel becomes forbidden films

In January 2015, Amazon put this pilot online among several candidate series and gathered data on their success to choose which to order. Written by Frank Spotnitz from Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel, this pilot became Amazon's most-watched since that program began, with Ridley Scott among its executive producers.

The title sequence, set to Edelweiss sung by Jeanette Olsson, won the 2016 Emmy for main title design, and James Hawkinson won the cinematography Emmy for the pilot. The scene where Hitler meets Rudolph Wegener was shot in the Bell Tower of Berlin's Olympic Stadium, part of a complex built under the Nazi regime.

The Story

In 1962, the Axis powers have won the Second World War: Japan occupies the West of the former United States, Nazi Germany controls the East and the Midwest, and the Rocky Mountains form a Neutral Zone between them. In San Francisco, Juliana Crain receives a package from her sister Trudy seconds before the Japanese police shoot Trudy, and inside is impossible footage of the Allies winning the war. Juliana carries the film to Canon City, in the Neutral Zone, and befriends Joe Blake, a resistance recruit who is secretly an agent of the SS officer John Smith, played by Rufus Sewell.

In the novel, The Man in the High Castle, the forbidden work is itself a novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen, in which the Allies defeat the Axis. The series keeps that title but gives it to forbidden films: newsreels showing other Earths, some where the Allies won, collected by the man of the title.

The Ideal Audience

The series ran for four seasons and 40 episodes on Prime Video, until November 2019. Rotten Tomatoes counted 95 percent positive reviews among 62 critics for the first season, and 64 percent among 25 critics for the second.

Common Sense Media recommends it from age 16, citing sudden on-screen killings, torture shown with blood, frequent swastikas and racist language. We would start with the first season, the best received by critics of the four.