The Man in the High Castle

Of course, every summer they pull their rut huts across our border en masse and, armed with cool boxes, scoops and blood-irritating children, they annex our beaches, towel by towel. Of course they are devastating our coastline with such deep potholes that you can hear lost kangaroo cubs calling for their mother in Australia. Of course it is annoying that you, as a Hoek-Van-Hollander or Renessenaar, are automatically addressed in German at the chip shop in the summer months, but as soon as the mercury drops below 20 degrees and the Oktoberfeesten start to cast their shadow ahead, our Eastern neighbors always grab back their belongings and go the opposite way back to the Heimat. But suppose… Suppose that frustrated little Austrian had been just a little better in Risken and suppose the British, Americans and Canadians had not thundered onto the French beach with their small boats… What would the world have looked like? Would we have become world champions once? To this day, should 3FM still dutifully have to hurl such a soft rock ballad by The Scorpions over the airwaves every hour? Would you then quickly grab the McDrive for a McBratwurst mit sauerkraut? Who knows. In any case, the world had looked a lot different. Maybe like in the new Amazon series The Man In The High Castle. It's the 60s and instead of free sex and you smoking a delirium at Woodstock, the American citizen is moaning under the occupation of the Germans and their Japanese friends. During a Second World War that went slightly differently from that in our history books, after conquering Europe they also made the big crossing to keep a good home there. America is on its knees and after a best of three rock, paper, scissors, the Germans are allowed to hang the entire East Coast full of Nazi knick-knacks, the Japanese provide all buildings on the West Coast with sliding doors with rice paper and reserve them somewhere near the Rocky Mountains some hectares that should serve as a neutral zone. Does it end well, all right? Not quite. Just as in the Netherlands in 1940 -'45, under the apparent calm of the daily worries, the growing resistance is simmering, but not only among the population is the unrest slowly but surely increasing, the relationship between the Germans and the Japanese also begins here and showing some cracks there. As a notorious non-reader, it is difficult for me to estimate whether The Man In The High Castle does justice to the book of the same name that sprouted from Philip K. Dick's head in 1962. In fact, that is not very important, because it is mainly about whether it has become a series that you want to watch and I think Amazon succeeded very well. Visually, The Man In The High Castle feels like a production that actually deserves to be seen on the big screen. Not surprising in itself when you consider that a movie veteran like Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator, American Gangster, The Marcian) interfered with it for ten episodes. Ok, later added effects, such as the waving Nazi flags along the facades of all buildings, look a bit wobbly here and there, but otherwise you can see that the people responsible for the set knew very well what they were doing. There is also little or nothing to criticize about the acting, although the characters of the good guys in particular are not as memorable as you would hope. These are the people you introduce yourself to for the umpteenth time at a party, because they have not exactly left a crushing impression the previous times. As in so many films and series, in The Man In The High Castle it is mainly the bad guys who take the shine. Obergruppenführer Smith, who is firmly in control in New York, is the bastard the way you like him, and the Japanese Inspector Kido, with his emotionless ruthlessness, won't give you cold clothes either. So at first glance not much to complain about. As the series progresses and your initial enthusiasm about how everything looks has diminished, the story collapses a bit, only to be rekindled in the last episodes. Too often you wonder at home on the couch in despair what exactly you are looking at. Some questions get an answer after a while, but if the credits pass you by after the last episodes, you are still left with a lot of question marks. Not a problem in itself, but then there must be a second season that puts an end to all this unbearable uncertainty. So fingers crossed.

Is anything more known about the sequel?