Given he’s worked for more than 60 years as a director and producer, Ridley Scott‘s TV work is comparatively sparse. In the last 57 of those years, the British film-making legend has directed only three episodes of TV (two of Raised by Wolves, and one of Dope Thief), as well as a pilot for The Vatican, and going back to the 1960s, five of the episodes he helmed are now considered lost entirely. He has, of course, produced and executive-produced other shows, but he is far from known as a major TV presence, despite his part in one of the best sci-fi shows of the 21st century.
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Scott executive-produced Prime‘s The Man in the High Castle, which was adapted from Philip K. Dick’s 1962 dystopian novel. His name was also heavily used in marketing at the time of its announcement, suggesting Prime (who picked up the series after the BBC and SyFy were both initially attached) knew the brand value of having a sci-fi legend attached to their production. The show ran for four seasons between 2015 and 2019, achieving surprisingly quiet critical acclaim, and despite several creative changes behind the scenes, and now, finally, thanks to a surprise deal with Amazon, all 4 seasons of The Man in the High Castle are coming to Netflix on March 11.
The Man in the High Castle is One of Prime TV’s True Gems
Despite the typical trend of rival streamers withholding their flagship content from each other for the sake of USPs, we’ve increasingly seen licensing deals taking even major titles to the competition. Last year, Netflix was able to license HBO Max premium titles, and now Netflix has set up a similar deal with Amazon, which began with all 25 Bond movies coming to Netflix recently. It also sees the early Prime flagship show landing on Netflix as Amazon looks to create new revenue from old content, including Originals.
The show is a bona-fide dystopian classic, and very typically Philip K. Dickian, with the first season scoring a huge 95% on RottenTomatoes and all 3 subsequent seasons scoring well. It never seemed to break through quite as well as other flagship shows, but has a truly compelling story at its heart. In a world where the Allies lost World War II, the Germans and Japanese took over the world, creating an alternate reality where a rebellion grows off the back of the discovery of films from the eponymous Man in the High Castle. His newsreels show other worlds, including those where the Axis was defeated.
The show was cancelled ahead of the release of its fourth season, with the decision to truncate the originally planned fourth and fifth seasons into one shorter final season. Viewing figures had dropped by that point, but the quality had not, and fans were robbed of the proper show we were initially promised. At least Netflix users get to go into the show knowing what to expect.
As sci-fi goes, it’s less about advanced technology or alien species, though some technology is more advanced than in the real world; it’s more like a nightmare scenario that could have happened. The concept, as such, is more poignant for that, and deeply disturbing at times, particularly thanks to the stunningly affecting performance by Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer John Smith, an American who joined the Nazis to protect his family. It’s definitely one of the big additions to Netflix in March to look out for.
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