What’s it rated? TV-MA
When? 2020
Where’s it showing? Amazon Prime
It’s 1977 New York, and troubled young Jewish man Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman)—after the murder of his grandmother—is taken in by a diverse group of Nazi hunters led by Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino). They’ve discovered Nazis living among us who are trying to set up a Fourth Reich. Meanwhile, they’ve also stumbled upon Operation Paperclip, the secret U.S. government operation that recruited and brought to America hundreds of Nazi scientists.
The series feels like a graphic novel brought to life, and some have taken to labeling the series “Jewsploitation” for its sometimes-glib reimagining of the real Nazi hunters upon which the series is based. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum criticized the series’ inaccurate depiction of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and, in particular, a scene where prisoners were forced to play a human game of chess, arguing such depictions would welcome future holocaust deniers. Fair criticism, perhaps, but the show is a lot of fun.
It’s got a great cast of characters, and it reaches for and captures surprising heights of emotional resonance. Though some Jewish organizations are calling on Amazon not to renew the series, I hope the show’s creators are given a second season to bring this series to its rightful conclusion: the destruction of the Nazis among us! (10 60-min. episodes.) Δ
This article appears in Apr 9-19, 2020.