By Dan Murphy
We have all heard about things to do while we are holed up in our houses. Two of the most obvious are to catch up on your reading list, magazines, books and newspapers; and watch the movies and television series that are either on your list or in your DVR queue.
Step one in the process: If you can afford it, pay the $10 a month for Netflix and for Amazon Prime. These two apps will give you thousands of movies, TV shows and special series made for just Netflix and Amazon.
“The Crown” on Netflix is in its third season, and would be a good binge watch to get you through a couple of weeks at home. It reviews the history of Queen Elizabeth II, still on the throne for the past 66 years and counting, in Great Britain.
The latest series for Amazon Prime members is “Hunters” starting Al Pacino in his first TV role. Pacino plays Nazi hunter Meyer Offerman, in this series set in 1977. Based on historic fiction, and a cartoon book, “Hunters” portrays a group looking for Nazis in America 30 years after they either snuck into the country or were invited in by the CIA after WWII.
A press release promoting “Hunters” describes the plot: “A motley crew of talented but everyday folks in 1977 Son-of-Sam New York, assembled and led by a mysterious concentration-camp survivor, hunt Nazis and uncover a deep-state conspiracy to bring back the Reich.”
The show is violent, with the Nazi hunters killing their targets with great skill, and also the older Nazis fighting back in the same bloody manner. But I have enjoyed this series, remembering the movies of old about the hunt for Nazis fleeing to South America (“The Boys from Brazil”). And there is historical accuracy in some parts of “Hunters;” many Nazi scientists were smuggled into the U.S. after the war to keep them from going to Russia.
Pacino is brilliant in his role as the leader of the hunters, and several characters in the series are Holocaust survivors, and flashbacks to their survival from the Nazi death camps are both sad and touching, but also remind us of how the hunt for Nazis was indeed a noble mission. Hunters has received mixed reviews, but watch the first episode or two to see if it’s your cup of tea.
Another series to watch is on HBO is “The Plot Against America,” which is based on the book by Philip Roth and directed by David Simon, known for the series “The Wire,” and the Yonkers-based series “Show Me a Hero.”
“The Plot Against America” is also historical fiction with a hint of real history. It’s 1940 in America and the U.S. has not yet entered World War II, which started less than a year ago, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and then France, and is now bombing England.
Many Americans did not want to get involved in World War II, including many famous Americans – like Joe Kennedy, the father of President JFK. In 1940, President Franklyn Roosevelt was about to run for an unprecedented third term (all Presidents before him stepped down after two terms).
The series shows us the life of a Jewish family in New Jersey, and how anti-Semitism was still alive and well at the time. Jewish-Americans, and FDR, knew the danger of Hitler and wanted to stop him, with reports slowly coming out of Germany about what the Nazis were doing to Jews in their country and in Poland.
Perhaps the most famous American of that time was Charles Lindbergh, who was the first to fly across the Atlantic, earning him a ticker tape parade and fortune. The kidnapping and death of his baby was a sad end to his public career in real history.
But Lindbergh also admired the military and air power of the Nazi’s taking a trip to Germany where he was photographed taking a medal from Herman Goering. That part is true. Also true is the group “America First” that Lindbergh was a member of and pseudo spokesman for, which advocated against America entering WWII.
The book’s fictitious turn occurs when Lindbergh decides to run for president against FDR in 1940, and becomes our 33rd president. With a President Lindbergh, America stays out of the war and the future of our country and the world takes a different turn.
So as to not ruin the series for our readers, we will leave it there.
Simon has done it again, getting rave reviews for his work. The NY Times review by Richard Lawson states: “‘The Plot Against America’ is rich and robust, a meticulously textured series that is rewarding both as a scary political what-if and as a story of a specific family fracturing and reforming as the ground quakes beneath them. ‘The Plot Against America’ is potent, nourishing television, a series that makes its points with an earnestness.”
Some are comparing Lindbergh in the series to President Donald Trump; a celebrity who becomes president. Roth wrote the book 20 years before Trump’s presidency. See if you find the same analogy when you watch an episode or two and see if it fits your taste.
And if none of these ideas work for you, County Executive George Latimer provides us with a list of possible things to do when you’re quarantined for 14 days…or longer:
Read all the piled-up periodicals, file bills in your file drawer, call your long-forgotten friends, read those books you’ve been meaning to read, exercise on your ancient stationary bike, write personal notes to relatives, do some crossword puzzles, and be glad you’re alive and healthy.
