In which your faithful reviewer is driven to google the WWII German nuclear weapon project, because some of the content of this episode made her say "hang on, that can't be right", but her memory of the dates of said project was vague.

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In which something I hoped for last week happens promptly.

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Merry_Maia pointed me towards the new show Manhattan. I've now watched the first two episodes and am intrigued, if not sold yet. It deals not with the New York City centre but with the atomic bomb project, starring mostly fictional characters (Oppenheimer so far was only in one scene, and he's the only historical figure I've recognized, though with an Hungarian I spent a while wondering whether he was supposed to be Edward Teller - aged up considerably - but then his name was spoken, and it wasn't.)

The creation of the nuclear bomb and the ethics involved in same tend to produce good drama. The best plays dealing with it I know are Copenhagen by Michael Frayn (Bohr and Heisenberg), In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer by Heiner Kipphardt (deals actually with the hearings Oppenheimer had to undergo during the McCarthy era, as far as the time frame is concerned, but at its core has the creation of the bomb), and indirectly Die Physiker by Friedrich Dürrematt. Which puts the level rather high. (The creation of the bomb was also used as an allegorical touchstone in Carnivale and in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), in both cases via visions and dreams. But Manhattan seems to be a straightforward historical show, which, like many a historical novel and show, at the same time comments on our present.

WWII has in the AngloAmerican world the reputation of being the last "good" war, with a clear cut war aim, an enemy with whom compromise was impossible. (If you're German, of course, there was nothing good about it, and the "what did you do during the war?" question that the baby boomer generation asked had completely different reasons and implications.) But the use of nuclear weapons at the very end never quit fit into that pop culture image, so it's not surprising pop culture tends to treated it more as a flash forward to the ambiguities to come. Speaking of flash forwards: Manhattan the show has Lisa, played by Olivia Williams, who is a scientist herself (albeit with a different specialty, she's a botanist) and married to our leading man, maverick physicist Frank, deduce there is something fishy about the order not to grow any vegetables in the camp despite the soil being suitable for some. This immediately associates radiation poisoning for a current day audience, but I'm not sure whether the army was even that careful back then. They certainly weren't in the 1950s. There's a notorious memo, re: above ground nuclear testing, wherein a part of the population at risk is regarded as expendable.

Never mind, though. The show tries to balance recreating the mindset of the era with awareness of all that's to come. So you have Frank putting the numbers of American soldiers dying each day on the drawing board and repeatedly pointing out that if they don't create "the gadget", German scientists will (since he doesn't have the benefit of historical hindsight and knowing the German project was way behind the American one). But you also have a young scientist, Charlie, torn and not sure about the ethics of it all, and asking "what about the next war" and what will happen when Stalin et al aquire the bomb as well. And you have yet another young scientist falling foul of security due to a gaffe, with terrible consequences for him. Richard Schiff plays his interrogator, and those scenes are very much post 9/11, post Abu Ghraib scenes aware and problematizing the use of what the CIA still insists on euphemistically calling "enhanced interrogation techniques" these days and what the rest of the world calls "torture" by the side the target audience thinks of as "ours".

(There were of course actual spies in the Manhattan project, but this character isn't one. I'll be interested whether the show will present "enhanced interrogation techniques" as less awful when it's an actual spy, but I'm cautiously optimistic and think not.)

The way the various characters are presented include some clichés; when Frank's team was referred to as a "team of misfits" in actual dialogue I had to roll my eyes, and wouldn't you know it, there is a rival team headed by a smug corporate scientist which is far better equipped etc.. (It's been years since I've read a relevant book, but wasn't in actuality the encouragement of exchanging ideas, information and material between scientists something that made Oppenheimer a good scientific manager of the whole project?) But for all that Frank's immediately recognizable as the "obsessed driven genius with nonexistant social skills" type, he's not prettied up, if that makes sense. He's not quipping sarcastic one liners to endear himself to the audience, and when he's being a jerk to people, the narrative actually takes their pov. The ethical dilemma he's presented with in the first episode and the choice he makes has immediate awful consequences. Also, he comes with the most interesting female character as a wife, who is played by the fabulous Olivia Williams, as mentioned. And she does get the one liners. They also have a nearly adult daughter, which means we have another entry in the "being married, a mother and over 40 does not render a female character dull to non existent" categories.

Lastly: episode 2 had two members of Frank's team drawing in Charlie into doing the maths on the gravity of the planet Krypton. And everyone based their calculations on Superman's ability to jump (he couldn't fly back then.) This is geeky fanservice, and it is the best.

In conclusion: I'll definitely keep watching.