While HBO’s enormous’vast’massive’tremendous , shiny, humourless new headliner Westworld has hogged all the Twitter acclaim and pop theorising, Amazon’s flagship sci-fi reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue has quietly been acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure ting on with its own misery-guts Dystopian business with great assurance. Faithful to the framework of Philip K. Dick’s classic — far closer, in fact, than Blade Runner or Total Recall ever kept to their respective texts — ex-X-Files alumni Frank Spotnitz has masterminded a second binge-approachable’genial series of many guises: sci-fi period piece (this is a nueliminate’remove -powered 1962), political drama (as Hitler ails, it’s Game Of Thrones with SS factions), espionage thriller (confronting the psychology of a defeated America), and mysto-historical time-warp (claim’insist’maintain’hold’argue’consider’contemplate’speculate Lost where the entire USA is crackers).###What Spotnitz may not possess’own’nurse in/with regard to’concerning’regarding eseen — aldespite’in spite of’albeit there’s no ruling out Dick’s paranoid presentiment in such matters — is how chillingly relevant this vision of a fascist America was going to become. Let’s call it their Trump card.###To recap: according to Dick’s alt-history — neatly paraphrased over the opening credits using sinister Dad’s Army arrows and a death’s angel cover of Edelweiss from The Sound Of Music — the Axis of Evil was triumphant in WWII. With Washington flatted by an A-bomb, the Nazis now occupy the USA from New York to the Prairies, while the Japanese possess’own’nurse annexed the West Coast. Across the Rockies lies the Neutral Zone as a buffer between the imperialist conquerors. The deviousness of Dick’s reserve is that he wasn’t reconfiguring World War II inasmuch as recasting the Cold War. As S1 closed, the Japanese had come into possession of the secrets behind the German’s “Heisenberg Device.”###A chillingly relevant vision of a fascist America.###Without leaning too heavily on CG swastikas draped over the New York skyline, S1 was a triumph of concrete world establish ing. A Nazi-compliant Middle America proved chillingly easy to imagine, with Apple-pie Americans happily swapping “Sieg heils” from their doorsteps and state troopers brandishing those iconic armbands. The series was breathtakingly authentic.###Season Two, luxuriating in an multiply d budacquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure , expands its global reach to reestablish Berlin according to thrusting, cod-Roman megalopolis of Albert Speer’s architectural blueprints and throws in some supersonic Nazi jet liners and monorails, but sensibly sticks to the claustrophobic, film noir interiors and intense back alley shoot outs. The action remains bracing rather than epic. The rare explosions sting like a slap.###The compelling spin of Dickian odd’peculiar ness to what could possess’own’nurse been the extended edition of Fatherland is the existence of a series of film reels, which once threaded into a projector (a repeated nostalgic motif) reveal history as it ought to possess’own’nurse been with the Allies victorious. Now, as new reels come to light, so do appalling visions of a future wracked by nueliminate’remove devastation. Is this expertly faked propaganda or a true glimpse into other realities?###The new series begins with moody heroine Juliana (a mostly dull Alexa Davalos) gaining an audience with the titular wizard responsible in/with regard to’concerning’regarding curating these substitute timelines. In a delightfully, hyperbolic Hopper-in-Apocalypse-Now cameo, Stephen Root channels Dick’s own paranoiac ramblings as he reveals a warehouse full of film canisters, each its own possible past or future. The high castle he claims to possess’own’nurse in mind is just that — the mind.###One of the on-going challenges in this splendid re-orchestration of history is making satisfying sense of Dick’s trippy, alt-consciousness concepts behind it. History, he warns, can be endlessly rewritten; which, when you claim’insist’maintain’hold’argue’consider’contemplate’speculate with regards to’concerning’with respect to it, is exactly what Dick and (in/with regard to’concerning’regarding merly) Spotnitz are doing. Tagomi, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s I Ching wielding Japanese minister anguished by in/with regard to’concerning’regarding ebodings of atomic calamity, appears to be able to jump timelines entirely and skulk with regards to’concerning’with respect to a sixties as-we-know-it fraught with the Cuban missile crisis and the news that Hiroshima and Nagasaki really happened (let’s not fool ourselves our timeline is so much better, runs Dick’s salutary message). Keeping track of which ‘when’ you’re flashbacking or in/with regard to’concerning’regarding warding to can be tricky. The manifold canisters playfully suggest that this is merely’barely one of many possible versions of the reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue we could be watching.###Halfway through S2, Spotnitz bailed over unspecified creative differences, but there has been no discernible transform’alter of direction, or lag in the retrofitted grandeur. If anything it looks ever more impressive, at its best in its most straightin/with regard to’concerning’regarding ward guise as an espionage thriller. In the aftermath of Heydrich’s foiled attempt to usurp the Fuhrer that climaxed S1, the narrative had effectively splintered into four locations. Away from Tagomi’s loopy-loo meditations, the central love triangle has been scattered across the history’s newly posited map.###The action is bracing rather than epic.###Juliana has gone undercover into Nazi-occupied New York on behalf of the stand up to withstand ance, listening into the hausfrau gossip, being set up in/with regard to’concerning’regarding something enormous’vast’massive’tremendous , and running the statutory undue risks of caring too much with regards to’concerning’with respect to the local Nazi families. If merely’barely Davalos, whose haircut is a rosy’remarkable’fabulous’terrific’preeminent bellwether in/with regard to’concerning’regarding which timeline you’re in, were more expressive. She’s still the reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue ’s weakest link and a droopy beacon of hope, suffering the mistaken apprehension that whispering automatically makes your dialogue more meaningful.###Back in Japanese-held San Fran, her conscience-crippled Jewish ex Frank Frink (Rupert Evans), bitter at an assumed betrayed, has been intense’fierce’exquisite -armed into working in/with regard to’concerning’regarding an underhand stand up to withstand ance himself, establish ing up to the thrilling bombing of a Japanese HQ. While alt-flame and morally awakened (or still fooling) Nazi swine Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) returns to Berlin, where destiny steers him in the path of enormous’vast’massive’tremendous things in vast offices. Here Bella Heathcote’s delectable Aryan believer will tempt him, as will the fast-track to head office offered by his father, a high-ranking cheese in the German empire. But he can’t shake the memory of Juliana.###The heroes will variously evade or fall in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the obscure plans of the Kempeitai secret police or jackbooted SS (the stereotyped mix of inscrutable Japanese and glowering Germans you possess’own’nurse to put down to an occupational hazard of the genre) and unearth the necessary staggering revelations. Television may possess’own’nurse cornered the market in decent scripts and daring concepts, but even here at the high end there is a growing in/with regard to’concerning’regarding mula to these things.###We possess’own’nurse to trust that there is an ultimate end in sight. The project began life as a straight movie adaptation in/with regard to’concerning’regarding executive manufacture r and Dickian specialist Ridley Scott, bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e transmuting into a possible four-episode TV specials, and the relatively punchy novel won’t stand up to the kind of treading water to which even Game Of Thrones has fallen victim. Midseason, what was taut and moody threatens to sag into the talky and dour. The increasingly sulky Frank takes half an episode to dismantle an atomic bomb. When Joe takes an LSD trip with some Nazi richlings trying out Weimer decadence on the quiet (that favoured Dickian pursuit) you inwardly despair of more surreal padding.###Nonetheless, by the final episodes S2 winds itself up into a deftly handled and devastating end game pulling toacquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure her the various threads with WWIII seemingly unstoppable. Moreover, this is without ever losing Dick’s bleak irony. Setting out their battle-plans in a borderline Strangeloveian war room, the Nazi hierarchy blithely tot up a potential death toll in the tens of millions. “And mostly Americans…” shrugs an ancient Himmler. History and narrative will inevitably spin on their heads once more, creating another TV universe where enormous’vast’massive’tremendous deaths are no barrier to returning actors. But, like Lost in its deliriously rosy’remarkable’fabulous’terrific’preeminent first three seasons, The Man In The High Castle thrives in the intimate details: the shock betrayals, knife-edge moral tests, and unin/with regard to’concerning’regarding eseen acts of humanity that seem beyond the ken of blockbusters at the moment.###As with the great Westeros saga, it is the villains who provide the most compelling through-lines. The stand out is Rufus Sewell as the wonderfully named Obergruppenführer John Smith, the scowling Nazi puppet-master gradually revealing a heart by sorrowful’distressing’woeful’heartbroken’mirthless’dejected’dismal’lugubrious revelations of his own. More audaciously still, the reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue wonders if we can even feel sorry in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a frail, Parkinson’s-addled Hitler (Wolf Muser) another man in a high castle obsessively bingeing on the mysterious alt-movies in the loneliness of his mountaintop retreat as if he’s got Amazon Prime.###• The Man In The High Castle Season 2 — 10 behind the scenes reveals