APRIL 16, 2026 – Whenever my wife and I get together with friends, conversation invariably touches three bases: 1. Health reports; 2. Shared political angst; and 3. Latest streaming favs. Oh yeah, and occasionally, as in always, we’ll talk kids and grandkids. Generally, I try to tune out the health reports, keeping my own to an absolute minimum. The shared political angst usually starts with someone asking, “Did you hear that [latest outrage]?!” Lately, I’ve noticed that we’re no longer shouting at each other—even though we’ve always been in complete agreement. (I hate to think we’re adapting to some kind of “new normal.”) That leaves the latest streaming shows, about which everyone except the blogger has much to say.
Among many other wonders of the world, three I find especially awe-inspiring: 1. The number of series on each of the various streaming platforms; 2. The number of series that our friends have watched; and 3. The number of series that I’ve not watched. I’m especially amazed by Wonder #2. Our friends read voraciously. They’re out and about. They travel. They’re engaged in a lot more activities than watching the latest crime-thriller series on Netflix.
My wife is very much a part of this crowd. She too reads a lot of books and knows a lot about them and their authors. After all, she’s a bookseller. Titles and writer names tumble off her tongue like gravy from a ladle. And she too is a traveler and an out-and-about person. Yet, she can hold her own in any fervent discussion of streaming series, and volley synopses and recommendations at a championship level.
Me? I just listen in awe. How can my spouse and our friends know so much about so much?
I can count on fewer than 5 toes and 10 fingers, all the TV and streaming series that I’ve ever watched, and that list would include Roots from about 1,000 years ago. It would also include The Man in the High Castle, which I’m currently watching—religiously—for the second time.
This dystopian show, which ran for four seasons between 2015 and 2019, was originally recommended to us by our good friends Ann and Ravi. In fact, we watched a number of episodes together, amusing ourselves by mocking the sometime title of one of the main characters, American WW II veteran John Smith (played brilliantly by Rufus Sewell), who “flips” to the dark side and becomes the sometime Obergruppenfűhrer of the “Greater Nazi Reich”—the eastern two-thirds of the United States. Ravi and I, especially, would laugh ourselves silly saying, “Obergruppenűbergruperobergruppenfuhrergruper,” and similar overstuffed exaggerations of Nazi nonsense titles of arrogant supremacy.
If you haven’t watched the series or read the book by the same name and on which the show is based, it’s a work of science fiction written by Phillip K. Dick and published in 1962. Ann read the book and panned it. She didn’t much care for the show either. Beth hasn’t read the book and never will; nor will she bother watching the series again. She knows what works and what doesn’t on film, and a central piece of this show just didn’t cut the mustard of her standards. In fact, Ann, Ravi and I agreed with Beth on this point, which I will describe in a moment. So far, one could fairly wonder why the four of us endured as many seasons and episodes as we did.
First, the snacks were always good and the weather always bad. Second, despite its obvious flaw (or so it seemed), the basic production values were excellent, and the series was replete with unending cycles of tension, resolution, and heightened tension. Moreover, Ravi (a fellow serious student of history) and I, thought the show’s redeeming feature was the extraordinary attention to detail in all the sets, props and costuming.
The flaw, as it were, is the role of the “films” that command the attention of nearly all the show’s characters of importance. These black and white 16mm movies are a combination of old (and to most Boomer audiences, recognizable) newsreels showing evidence of the Allies’ victories over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in WW II and other films showing the alternative fates of the main characters. The films have been collected and in some cases produced by “The Man in the High Castle,” an elusive protagonist, and supposedly represent alternative realities—that is, the actual post-WW II reality—to the dystopian fictionalized outcome around which the show is crafted.
To provide more context . . . In the main, the show depicts an alternate history leading up to the setting in 1962, and the plot runs forth in four primary locations: New York City, capital of “GNR” or “Greater Nazi Reich,” which is roughly the eastern two-thirds of the United States, annexed by Germany after the “Axis victory” in WW II; San Francisco, center of “JPS” or “Japanese Pacific States,” which comprise the West Coast states of the U.S., Imperial Japan’s spoils from said victory; and Cañon City (and environs), a rundown center of activities in the “Neutral Zone,” roughly, the Rocky Mountain states, which is more or less lawless and impoverished but free. The Neutral Zone is where the Man in the High Castle hides out (until he’s captured), along with many members of the Resistance, and where various buccaneers, Nazi bounty hunters and Japanese Kampetei are in search of fugitives. A fourth setting is an abandoned mine in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, where the Nazis have built a device that conveys people to Die Nebenwelt or “other world” or parallel realities.
Okay, so far, I know what most people of sound mind are thinking. It’s what Ann, Ravi, Beth and I were thinking; namely, this is far-fetched crazy town, and the role of the film reels is one big, “Huh?” But the second time around, in the absence of disparaging remarks after each episode, I’m developing much greater respect for this series. As a friend and neighbor mentioned to me two days ago during a casual conversation out on the sidewalk, “I don’t watch a series based on a thumbnail sketch of the story but rather on its overall quality—acting, writing, directing, other production values, thought provoking.” As applied to The Man in the High Castle, that standard—overall quality—should signal a double-thumbs up. In fact, against the backdrop of our current realities, this series gives us much to ponder.
More to this review will follow, so don’t touch the dial. (Cont.)
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
