The Plot Against America

As deeply disturbing as it is brilliantly compelling. ... A top-to-bottom standout cast that makes the mesmerizing most of this potent material.

An intense new six-part miniseries from David Simon and Ed Burns of “The Wire” that airs on Monday nights. I can’t remember seeing a period drama — it’s set from 1940 to 1942 — that speaks so directly and specifically to the present moment. ... “The Plot Against America” is indelible piece of work about how politics reaches into personal lives.

Simon and Burns have put a remarkable ensemble in front of the camera to breathe life into Roth’s characters.

Superb. ... To their credit, Simon and Burns, each of whom either wrote or co-wrote every episode, never get too heavy-handed in their attempts to make connections between the story they are telling and the Trump era. ... The cast of The Plot Against America does committed, convincing work across the board.

The Plot Against America is a bleak watch, but full of spectacular performances and masterful craftsmanship.

Engrossing. ... Over the course of six propulsive episodes, we see how rising anti-semitism begins to encroach on each of their lives, even as some family members refuse to see the administration’s role in stoking hate.

Simon and Burns craft their story with remarkable texture, tracking the nation’s downward spiral from inside a besieged family’s living room. ... The final hour is one of the most breathtakingly tense episodes of television I’ve ever seen, carrying you on a dark journey through a country on fire.

An emotionally moving period drama that feels timely and recognizable in the present.

What Simon and Burns expertly capture is the slow faint creep of fascism and the sinister way it suddenly seems to engulf our lives.

Created and written by David Simon (“The Wire,” “The Deuce”), “The Plot Against America” isn’t some garish exploitation of goose-stepping Nazi nastiness. It’s far too wise for that.

The Plot Against America feels more like a loving, compassionate project for Simon; the concern he has for each member of the Levin family, and even those seemingly trying to destroy that family, lifts the series up, creating an indelible and firmly grounded wake-up call for its viewers.

A stellar cast, fascinating characters and an engaging story line make “The Plot Against America” a must-watch limited series.

Riveting. [16-29 Mar 2020, p.11]

Incisive. ... Simon is TV’s master of realism, and here the groundedness of his storytelling combines with the distinctiveness of Roth’s characters to deepen the political profundity as well as the visceral impact of this speculative fiction. Ryder, Kazan, Turturro and Spector are all spectacularly alive in roles that require them to give fiery speeches and have emotional breakdowns without appearing rehearsed. Everyone’s point of view is comprehensible, if not necessarily sympathetic. The look of the show is haunting in its familiarity.

A brilliant, sobering alternate-history miniseries about an America that elected Charles Lindbergh president, retreated behind "America First" nationalism and didn't enter World War II.

The Levins are a family in full, not just plot-advancement devices, and Kazan and Spector are especially strong anchors. ... [Simon’s] produced a translation that’s at once fully Rothian and fully Simonian. He hasn’t changed a lot in the story, but where he has, it’s to emphasize that the charismatic bigot in the White House is not simply an aberration who can be erased and forgotten like a bad dream. ... That merger of visions makes the difference between a dutiful adaptation of a great novel and a series that is great in itself. There is plenty of pugilistic optimism in this “Plot,” but it’s tough-minded.

The Plot Against America is incredible, if harrowing. ... If you didn’t know what’s to come, you might be confused why what appears to be a normal family drama is being elevated as so profound. But the set dressing is necessary. Consider it the gasoline in the Molotov cocktail that episode two throws, burning all the way through the finale, which alters Roth’s own ending in a provocative—though still in the author’s spirit—way.

Offering complex, character-driven drama that will linger in your head long after it’s over less for what it says about our past and more for what it’s trying to warn us regarding our future.

The final scenes of “The Plot Against America” might not offer easy, dramatically resounding resolutions on every front. I would have liked to see the story continue — but that’s also a testimony to how powerful and compelling this thought-provoking alt-history journey has been from the start.

Fine, eerily evocative HBO adaptation. ... It takes a while for the HBO series to spark in human terms. By the midpoint, however, Roth’s narrative mechanics prove irresistible and the sons’ storylines, in particular, so obviously dear to Roth, pierce the heart.

The pigheaded optimism and pessimism rampant among this tragic, stubborn political hodgepodge is composed of some unbelievable characters and others all too real. Together, arcs can sometimes seem conspicuously constructed; other times they’re so out-of-control that it’s hard to believe it holds together. ... Uncomfortable as it is, it’s all immaculately crafted. The Plot Against America is another crash course in history, sociology, and political science from The Wire team that has all the power of a waking nightmare.

Over The Plot Against America’s six-hour course, Simon and Burns do their usual exceptional work in delicately fitting pieces of a larger and larger puzzle together to reveal a bigger and more complicated picture at every step. If the beginning seems a bit stagey [...] it finds its feet quickly thereafter.

The dialogue can lean too heavily towards exposition, and there is a staginess about some of the scenes. But as an alternative history lesson, it is frightening and compelling.

A slow-build drama.

It's a chilling and effective reflection of American life in the past five years and semi-paranoid fantasy of where the country could head, with a remarkable level of craft in its acting, writing, and direction.

The Plot Against America can be as difficult watch as the toughest moments of The Wire, Treme, or The Deuce. By the end, Simon and Burns make their story even darker than the novel's, but in a way that feels sadly true to today. [Mar 2020, p.90]

A six-hour nightmare with an insidious creep. Some viewers are likely to complain that nothing sufficiently dramatic or awful is happening — and they'll surely be wrong — before the series twists the narrative knife by the end. ... These six hours should freak you out; if they don't, that demands introspection too.

Watching The Plot Against America often feels like being locked in a closet with a fanatical #NeverTrumper: It'll give you a headache even if you agree with him.

The Plot Against America is entertaining: handsome, well-acted, and full of tensely plotted sequences—most notably, a road trip that Herman and Sandy make to Kentucky to rescue a little boy whose mother has been murdered by an ascendant KKK. But it has a slippery relationship to reality. ... The Plot Against America reminds its viewer so incessantly of its parallels to 21st-century politics that it often feels more like a parable than a drama.

Aside from giving these secondary characters more substantive scenery to chew on, our wish list also includes better dialogue for the leads, especially Spector, who spends far too much time reciting thematic exposition. When he does get to speak like a living breathing marginalized minority he’s downright gripping, but show runners Simon and Ed Burns should have more faith that viewers can read between the lines, and ditch the exposition. ... But if this miniseries falls short of those lofty goals, it’ll still be sturdily watchable, thanks to its pristine production value and impassioned acting.

Spector is the show’s absolute standout, but the supporting cast is no less incredible. ... At only six episodes, the limited series is like a bullet train of storytelling, and never feels like it’s spinning its wheels. ... But the series finale also presents the biggest stumbling block. The show’s ultimate resolution to America’s spreading unrest and violence (and, let’s face it, Naziism) is ludicrous to the point of being unforgivable.

Herman is a thankless role. Bess, on the other hand, who is equal parts maternal caution and nervous calculation, is given a deeply moving portrayal by the wonderful Ms. Kazan, and is really the heart of the story. ... “The Plot Against America,” which grows increasingly nervous-making as it closes in on an ending far more topical and obvious than the one Roth provided, is overly deliberate in its period detail and almost distracting in its evocation of time and place (mostly Newark, N.J.). This is because the world it presents doesn’t look lived in and characters living in it often sound less like people out of the ’40s than people out of ’40s movies.

Factoring out the speculative aspects of the story, one is left with a moderately diverting drama of a family under pressure, arguing about whether what looks like trouble is really trouble. (It really is.)

What works so well on the page becomes inert on the screen. This superb cast, headed by the always fine Spector, fights the inertia but it can't fight the novel.

Early episodes, written by Simon and Burns, struggle to find the sliver of space that exists between topical significance and emotional consequence. Characters tend to expound rather than converse, having arguments with one another that sound more like op-eds than the range of personal experience. ... By the fourth episode, “The Plot Against America” begins to feel less like a book report and more like a compelling drama.