I really wanted to like this limited series. The historical characters-artists, writer-thinkers, philosophers-are familiar and deserve far better. A telling indicator of the empty-calories production: Despite the compelling, emotional historical narrative, the characters are too often one-dimensional. One of the most pivotal and horrific events in modern history and all we get is superficial treatment of those events and characters who engage only minimally with those events.
If I didn't know anything about this historical period and relied on this series to learn about it, I'd think these characters, targeted by Nazis and fascists, did little more than party, drink, smoke, and engage in lots of self-promotion driven by a self-absorbed lack of awareness about the monumental events unfolding around them. There are few, if any, genuinely sympathetic characters in what should have been a production filled with such. I'll stick with Casablanca's fictional take. But the series' photography is *gorgeous* and reflects the artistry that defines some of the principal characters' work.
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