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The Man in the High Castle (2015)
Ridiculously Stunning Visuals & Atmospherics alone make it a must-watch (despite the slow-pace & mediocre/okayish writing/editing)
Review of Season-1 [**No Spoilers; just a general overall review].
This is Amazon's most popular/watched/high-profile original-TV- show. And it's pretty good stuff, although it could have been a whole lot faster and better. The visuals and atmospherics and look/feel/texture are all stunning, and are the strongest point of this entire series. It's really remarkable and breathtaking how they've managed to sketch out in such painstaking intricate detail how America would look like in 1960s under Imperial Japanese & Nazi German Reich rule (and for that matter how Imperial Japan & Nazi Germany would look like in the same period). Everyone in the Art/Production/Graphics departments deserves a standing ovation.
Storywise, it's sorta okayish. There's a good dose of high-stakes cat-and-mouse four-way drama involving the Japs, the Nazis, the Resistance and the main/lead characters caught in the crossfire, and the stakes can't be higher what with the Japs & Nazis being locked in an escalating power struggle - with the possibility of another looming global war. But still, there's more than a few places where the story sags quite a lot, and the pace slows to a crawl. Some of the emotional elements seem far too forced and contrived. As others have noted, there's also an irritating tendency for some shots/scenes to linger far too long, and for supporting characters to be given disproportional time.
Screenplay & Editing should have been much more strict and could have resulted in much more taut & tense episodic arcs. Plus, the premise/plot seems too mysterious and hokey, and it seems downright silly that people are so passionately putting their lives on the line to play pass the parcel with some film-reel. As others have noted, it feels like an eternity before things start going, and the viewers end-up having to wait for far too long in search for a semi-elusive reveal/pay-off. But by the middle/end of the season, it speeds up and things start coming together in cliff-hangers and a steady climatic buildup of tension - leading to a nice twist.
Even so, it's undeniable that the crux of Season-1's story-arc could have been conveyed quite well in 5-7 episodes. With 10 episodes, there was a scope for a lot more to have happened. Perhaps the intent was to parcel out the story into multiple seasons. But in the process, the viewers kinda feel a bit manipulated/cheated into a protracted anticipatory wait and while the climatic tension buildup is quite good, it falls short given the lengthy wait and overall slow-crawling. The screenplay & editing department kinda miscalculated and screwed-up, which is a real shame since the Art/Production/Visual/Graphics departments really went all stops out and have put on a spectacular show (one wonders how this would play in 360 video or VR environment).
Acting-wise, the performance of Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer stands out as a class-act. Plenty of nuanced, grey-shades performances on the Japs side too. I loved the fact that things aren't that clear-cut and that some of the Japs & Nazis have doubts about their Empires, and have misgivings about the world shaped as a result, and indeed some guilt about their own haunted roles. Streaming-wise, Amazon Prime Video to be far superior to Netflix in-terms of delivering crystal-clear HD content on a 4Mbps connection (in India) in a more smooth, less-prone-to-Low-Res way. This probably has to do with Amazon having direct internal access to it's cloud services, and Netflix needing to have one more layer of indirection/routing. Also, I love Amazon Prime's practice of giving General-Trivia, Cast/Crew and assorted information. Their whole UI is stylish, sleek and top-notch. That's a pretty nifty value-addition, and one area where Netflix needs to play catch-up.
BOTTOM-LINE: Overall, a solid 3.5/5 (or 7.0/10). Definitely worth watching. With faster story-lines, better screenplay, better editing, this could have been one of the Great New TV Series in this Golden Age of TV (perhaps on-par with stuff like Narcos or HoC or GoT). Instead, it's "quite OK" and "pretty good" in stretches. But still worth a watch. The Visuals, Atmospherics and attention to detail are just ridiculously mind-blowing and surreal, and by themselves make this an absolute must-watch.
PS: The title-song is quite irritating and doesn't gel with the tone of the show. When they spent so much time/effort/money for such high-production-values and rich-visualizations, it's a shame they couldn't have come up with a better sounding theme-song. Also, here's hoping that the Writers & Editors introspect and restructure with an aim for speed, tension and efficiency. Here's hoping Season-2 is much more tense/visceral.
House of Cards (2013)
Netflix's adventurous gamble is Absolutely Stellar and Enthralling
*minor spoilers* (mainly vague overall expositions)
There's tons of reviews floating around, here, elsewhere, among all the fever-pitch buzz about this show, and there isn't anything much to add/subtract, but let me just say the buzz is worth it, and then some.
Kevin Spacey is a maestro of deadpan acidity, of sharp wit, of steely resolve, of a serpentine insidiousness, of a subtle, underplayed sense of viciousness. And he shows all of that here in an absolutely bravura performance. The guy is a legend, and this show belongs to him entirely.
Among the supporting cast, Corey Stoll managed to capture the Shakespearean tragedy and fatalism of Pete Russo's character. I literally had goosebumps when his character was hitting the highs and was completely shattered when his character was hitting the lows. Robin Wright playing Claire Underwood was pretty much Lady Macbeth incarnated in 2013 - you always know she keeps her feelings contained. Michael Kelly playing Doug Stamper is the picture-perfect "right-hand man", doing Spacey's spadework with clockwork precision and deadly discretion. Kate Mara playing Zoe Barnes was perhaps the weakest link of the show, but that's also on account that she's competing with the likes of Spacey and Wright.
The setting and screenplay is very realistic. It is very believable that events that transpire have or are likely to happen at some point. And it has just the right amount of artistic license to spice things up, keep it interesting, and still latch onto a very realistic and solid base.
I gave it 5 stars because it's a fantastic achievement and adventurous/gutsy gamble for something like Netflix to spend so much money and commit so much resources to a show of this scope and scale. The production qualities are top-notch and this really feels more like a professional Hollywood production, leaving behind comparable TV shows. Had this been a regular CBS/Fox/etc production, I might have given it a 4.5 stars. Netflix had a lot of balls for being so committed and I really hope for their sake and ours, it pays off well.
The Story of India (2007)
Engaging, Passionate & Ambitious in Scope!
Superlative stuff!!
1) Covering a history of a country as vast, diverse, complex, chaotic and ever-changing as India over a period of 10K years is obviously biting more than you can chew. I think the narrator and the BBC guys deserve a lot of credit for handling it in the exceptional way that they did.
2) Like it usually goes with such sweeping historical documentaries, you either get a vast overview like a powerpoint presentation without meaning (a bread first search) - or you get a selective investigation of individual threads/stories which might not be comprehensive but provides emotional depth (iterative depth first search).
3) Some people might be put off after the first episode where Sri Lanka was shown as Tamil Nadu on the map. Granted this is misleading, however point to note: TN was highlighted with contrast and the caption "Tamil Nadu" was appearing beside it (ditto with Kerala) - the fact that the graphics guys decided to caption it on top of Sri Lanka.
4) As an Indian, and as someone who has read history of all kinds, I was more than blown away by the sheer number of facts I pleasantly discovered by watching this series.
5) By and large, the narrator is affable and likable and his enthusiasm is quite infectious. His sense of wonder seemed very genuine to me. If there is a criticism, I do agree that sometimes the narrator did seem to excessively gush and praise (and portray historic India as a utopian paragon of civilization - I am sure that historic India also had its own set of vices) - this did seem to be because of some sub-conscious sense of guilt that the narrator clearly felt at European imperialism in the past. While that did appear a little contrived, it was a very minor distraction.
6) Because this format relied on micro-threads and unconventional sources (a lot of it hearsay and word-of-mouth), some of the awe-filled facts might turn out to be fiction. Furthermore, I would like to point out - that civilization and history is as much about the legends and the tales and the fables as it is about facts.
Bottomline: This is a fabulous and awe inspiring effort. Definitely a must-watch for Indians and non-Indians alike. BBC as always proves itself to be the only broadcaster/producer of any content of repute.