The Man in the High Castle

The first six episodes (all those provided to press ahead of release) consistently surprise in how they deepen those characters and weave their journeys together.

A compulsively compelling series that grows richer and more emotionally nuanced as it gains momentum, The Man in the High Castle milks its provocative what-if premise for plenty of smart suspense and subtle shading.

Epic in scale, gorgeous, and beautifully acted.

Although some liberties have been taken with the characters and plot, it is an immediately intriguing, wonderfully textured realization of Dick's challenging book.

Much of the six hours made available for preview centers on Juliana and Joe--and at times their story can drag. But the redeeming glory of Castle is the expansive world of characters it creates.

Yes, this is chilling stuff. And provocative. It makes you ponder just how precious freedom really is and what kind of sacrifices you would make to maintain it.

It’s serious-minded sci-fi that’s stylish and strange and soulful, and only grows more rewarding over time.

Although the writing and storytelling in first episode (which Amazon first shared with its Prime customers earlier this year) come off a little clumsily, overall it’s a fascinating launch for an espionage series. The Man in the High Castle is also expertly and realistically imagined.

Directed by David Semel, the first episode (now available on Amazon) sets a visual tone that immediately sets this apart from other thrillers.... By the second episode, you’ll want to know who’s really good and who’s bad and how the latter will meet their untimely deaths.

On a macro-scale, the series is absorbing, but it takes a few episodes to settle into the smaller stories that are unfolding.

What it delivers is something more along the lines of Boardwalk Empire, where the main draw is suspense and bursts of gunfire and torture, undergirded by the low-level dread that comes from not being able to trust most of the characters when they tell you who they are and what side they’re loyal to, and wondering when, not if, the other shoe will drop.

These shortcomings [acting by Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, and story continuity] don’t ruin The Man in the High Castle, even if they prevent the drama from rising to a more rarified status. It’s a compelling addition to this year’s already long list of worthwhile TV shows.

The Man in the High Castle has a solid opening episode and gains weight and heft as it goes, in part due to fantastic world-building.

The Man in the High Castle has no trouble building and maintaining tension. Honestly, it gave me nightmares. Missing, or at least muted a bit in the four episodes I've seen, though, was the sense I had from the book of how life, and even personality, could be shaped by occupation over time, rendering resistance less and less likely.

The Man in the High Castle can be a little cluttered in terms of narrative, but it’s the kind of challenging program that we haven’t received from Amazon and rarely even receive from Netflix.

Even past the halfway point (Amazon made the first six episodes available to critics), The Man in the High Castle is still refreshingly intriguing and worth the investment.

This subversive dark fantasy feels too real to ignore. [9-22 Nov 2015, p.13]

The pacing is wobbly, and while the actors all seem period-appropriate (Davalos, whose previous series was TNT's '40s crime drama "Mob City," is a graceful acting time traveler), the only character who really comes to life as more than a functionary of the plot is one of Spotnitz's creations: Obergruppenführer John Smith (Rufus Sewell).... Still, the world itself is fascinating and fully-realized enough to compensate for the people who live there.

The show’s first episode sets the scene, but only hints at the richness of detail that informs future episodes. It’s not just that we learn things about the various characters we probably didn’t suspect at the outset: The genius of the series is how Spotnitz and his creative team carefully advance the thought-provoking thematic elements through stunning attention to detail.

Spotnitz takes his time in all things, and the slow pace of the first six episodes of The Man in the High Castle often work against the agitated drama of its imagery.

Those are a lot of threads to knit together, and some feel looser than others.... But there are enough chilling scenes to make The Man in the High Castle genuinely disturbing.

The show is yet another entrant in the fast-growing category of TV good enough to watch and enjoy, but not quite good enough to make specific time for.

Intriguing... but somber and slowww-moving.

For a show so saturated with angry, volatile men (and it’s almost all men, here), there’s an awful lot of brooding. But the actors are so strong, and the world they’ve created so lived-in, the show can get away with some of these early missteps.

The series, in large part, fails to deliver on its fascinating premise. Simply put, it’s plodding, moves at a glacial pace and overreaches with too many diffuse narrative strands.

The tone is consistently thrilling, even as the story goes through predictable “everyman finds new hope to fight evil” motions.

The Man in the High Castle is a show that walks a fine line; it’s just intriguing enough to keep me coming back, but it doesn’t make me yearn to watch the next episode.

The character-building, unfortunately, is far weaker than the world-building. The dialogue is often B-movie grade, and Juliana and Frank, the closest thing the ensemble has to leads, are dull and dour.... That said, I finished six episodes eager to see the last four. High Castle is at least addictive as a mystery.