It's a crowded field of dramas out there to vie for your attention and though this show is not groundbreaking for it genre (best described as "serialized historicalish drama"), it has somehow become must-see viewing for me because it's just a highly watchable show.
Set in Los Alamos at the dawn of the Manhattan Project, the show makes use of its setting quite well in creating juicy historically accurate drama. At the same time, it subtly highlights societal problems (naivette about war that can only be known in hindsight, racial/gender/religious disparities) without coming off as overly preachy or letting this ironic distance of history become the main talking point of the show (hello Mad Men).
The show maintains a fairly tight grip on its moderately-sized ensemble and boasts a number of interesting characters including a lady scientist who knows how to navigate a boys club while using her sexuality as an ace up her sleeve, a classic Jewish bride who defied her parents by marrying a nuclear scientist and harbors something that falls somewhere between homo-social longings and repressed lesbianism, Daniel Stern as an Obi-Wan Kenobi type whose career was halted long ago.
Much of the show's tension comes from the fact that the U.S. scientists aren't just fighting the Nazis, they're also fighting each other as the researchers are split up into rival factions. Thus, it's a show about people overcoming their hang-ups and working together more than it is about some big bad. There's also an interesting through-line of tension between the lower-class soldiers (who view a Los Alamos as a second-rate posting) and the educated scientists who resent each other to some extent. The dichotomy between the brains and the brawn of the military as a metaphor for the have-nots and haves is a particularly relevant angle towards audiences today.
Lastly, one of the show's strengths is that it makes a complex subject, nuclear physics, dramatic and accessible. There's not an overflow of technobabble (symptomatic of Star Trek). I don't know much about physics (let alone nuclear physics) and I can follow every nuclear reactor breakdown and plutonium shortage crisis.
Set in Los Alamos at the dawn of the Manhattan Project, the show makes use of its setting quite well in creating juicy historically accurate drama. At the same time, it subtly highlights societal problems (naivette about war that can only be known in hindsight, racial/gender/religious disparities) without coming off as overly preachy or letting this ironic distance of history become the main talking point of the show (hello Mad Men).
The show maintains a fairly tight grip on its moderately-sized ensemble and boasts a number of interesting characters including a lady scientist who knows how to navigate a boys club while using her sexuality as an ace up her sleeve, a classic Jewish bride who defied her parents by marrying a nuclear scientist and harbors something that falls somewhere between homo-social longings and repressed lesbianism, Daniel Stern as an Obi-Wan Kenobi type whose career was halted long ago.
Much of the show's tension comes from the fact that the U.S. scientists aren't just fighting the Nazis, they're also fighting each other as the researchers are split up into rival factions. Thus, it's a show about people overcoming their hang-ups and working together more than it is about some big bad. There's also an interesting through-line of tension between the lower-class soldiers (who view a Los Alamos as a second-rate posting) and the educated scientists who resent each other to some extent. The dichotomy between the brains and the brawn of the military as a metaphor for the have-nots and haves is a particularly relevant angle towards audiences today.
Lastly, one of the show's strengths is that it makes a complex subject, nuclear physics, dramatic and accessible. There's not an overflow of technobabble (symptomatic of Star Trek). I don't know much about physics (let alone nuclear physics) and I can follow every nuclear reactor breakdown and plutonium shortage crisis.