Delivering seasons of TV programs through internet streaming has made writing a conventional review an even more fruitless enterprise than it already was. It’s impossible to determine – or even average – where those watching a season currently are in the run of episodes and it’s possible that they’re already done with it. A review makes no sense in either context. For want of a better solution to the futility of internet TV journalism, I’ve decided to formulate my response to Amazon Prime’s original series The Man in the High Castle as a list of what I’ve learned from the first season:
Who do you think you are kidding Mr. Churchill?
- The program doubles as an instructional video showing employers how to treat Amazon workers.
- There is no ‘Reich’ pun beyond the writers.
- I learnt what happened in the post-war world by the show telling me what didn’t happen in the post-war world.
- You will say the words: ‘I want Hitler to come back’.
- In a parallel universe where Philip K. Dick didn’t exist, people would have a lot less respect for Ridley Scott.
- I am still not convinced that the Trade Minister isn’t Hiro.
- South America is now a haven from Nazis.
- There is a moment where you will believe that Hitler’s apocryphal ‘one ball’ will become a plot point.
- The opening sequence is like Dad’s Army on rewind.
- There are British spies in The American Reich.
- All it took to teach Rufus Sewell restraint was playing a Nazi.
- It contains the best scene of an African-American man teaching a dwarf to fish outside of an epilogue of Walker, Texas Ranger.
- Berlin is still cool.
- We’d have had colour TV a lot sooner if the Nazis had won.
- Hitler must have been really affected by post-war European art cinema since he now prefers avant-garde documentaries to American B-movies.
- In Japan, morality is measured in spectacle rims.
- The Man in the High Castle is not Julian Fellowes, though they share a lot of the same political views.
- Hitler is way ahead of home theaters.
- The Smith & Jones sketch outlining the five Nazi General archetypes is still the standard for all screen portrayals.
- It’s basically Sliders.
