Transatlantic

Transatlantic takes a serious story and gives it a bit of a bouncy, adventurous edge, thanks to some crisp writing and a fun lead performance by Jacobs. But it still pays reverence to the people who risked everything to help Nazi refugees, as well as the refugees themselves.

Solid. ... It’s impossible to do justice to radical genius within the constraints of a middlebrow template. For all its technical competence and moral care, Transatlantic falls short of the art and ideas that inspired it.

Transatlantic is an effective, crowd-pleasing thriller. It moves briskly, lays out the story and stakes cleanly, and has three strong and likable lead performances.

As a palatable history lesson, Transatlantic is comprehensive. ... Transatlantic struggles, however, to weave its learning points elegantly into the drama, to show rather than tell.

The performances are game. ... But the series sacrifices a bit of depth in exchange for accessibility, keeping its famous players at arm’s length and speedrunning through the honorable work the ERC did in real life.

It’s lighter on its feet and more generally entertaining than any summary of the subject matter might lead you to expect. But since all you come away from Transatlantic with is a superficial understanding of the subject matter — the tip of the tip of the iceberg and perhaps not even that — it’s easy to feel that’s something, but hard to feel like it’s enough.

Though “Transatlantic” is made with evident affection for its subject, and is not without entertainment value, it can also be clunky, corny and clichéd, scattered and perfunctory and at times unintentionally laughable.