A wild wild ride Wow ! ... You innocently sit down one evening to check out a new series; then, five hours of viewing time later, as the final credits scroll by you slowly begin gathering your wits back about you, eventually awakening to the wild wild ride you had been taken on. From the start in the first episode and scene by scene, this ride becomes, nearly imperceptibly, more and more frenzied as tension and suspense steadily rise till the whole story explodes in paroxysms of psychological, social, historical derangement (which, for the series creators, presumably is intended to symbolically represent the dramatic historical moment upon which the story is bound and fastened). Production, acting, mood, setting, narrative and character development, all achieve high levels of refinement, assuring most viewers find this series a rewarding investment of their time.