Underrated Series: Manhattan

 

In 2014 Netflix was not yet the phenomena it would become. Amazon was only gingerly stepping into the world of streaming that year and Hulu was basically only showing old series. At that point in TV history cable was king and one could find some gems of TV in the most unlikely of places. In future articles I will go into detail on some of those series but in this entry, I intend to deal with one that was on a network that almost certainly may not exist any more but whose moment in the sun led to one of the more undervalued – and now relevant – series of the 2010s.

WGN was initially a superstation that was based entirely out of Chicago well before it was inducted into the family of cable. Even then, it truly wasn’t much of a force in television, specializing mostly in reruns of procedurals and Cubs and White Sox games. In the middle of the 2010s, like so many other fledgling cable stations, it made an entry into original programming. Most of its series were more or less period dramas and some of them were very intriguing. Salem would be set in the seventeenth century during the Witch Trials. Underground, by far their most critically acclaimed series, took place just prior to the Civil War mainly through the world of slaves. In both series, they were able to find some fairly large names: in Underground, Aldis Hodge, Jurnee Smollett, Reed Diamond and Christopher Meloni had lead roles. In Salem, Shane West, Xander Berkeley and Lucy Lawless were among regulars. But the show I found by far the most compelling was Manhattan. And considering that Oppenheimer, one of the most anticipated film releases of 2023 is hitting theaters, I thought it worth exploring this show that in a much greater detail explored the critical era that the film will be studying.

To be clear,  while some of the real characters involved in Los Alamos are present in Manhattan, including Oppenheimer himself, they are essentially regulated to cameos. Almost all of the characters are fictional scientists and it is not clear who they are supposed to represent. Indeed, it is likely given the nature of the era that most of them did not even exist. However, when it came to both the atmosphere on what was happening at the time, Manhattan  more than picks up the aura of the times. It also had one of the best casts of any TV series during that decade, many of whom would become major fixtures in the subsequent decade.

At the center of Manhattan is Frank Winter, played by John Benjamin Hickey. Hickey has been one of the most consistent workers throughout the era of Peak TV, almost always in supporting roles, almost always as a gadfly of some kind. Prior to Manhattan, he had been known to me for his supporting role as Laura Linney’s psychologically disturbed brother on The Big C and a tech millionaire of a Facebook like search engine on The Good Wife. Hickey was rarely more riveting as Winter, pushing every member of his team towards the production of the bomb, determined to get this done as fast as possible. When the series begins in 1943, Winter’s drive is focused entirely on idealism: in the second episode, he breaks protocol to tell his wife that what they are working on: “will not just end this war. It’s going to end all wars.” At one point in Oppenheimer, this line of dialogue is uttered and a critic wonders how anyone could be this naïve: Manhattan makes it very clear this naivete was driving much of the project.

The other scientist drawn in Charlie Isaacs, who loathes Winter but has been brought in, still not aware why he has been so. Through the length of the series both men will always be in conflict. At first, Winter is trying to force Isaacs to go along with his plans; in the second season, he’s desperately trying to convince him to work against the use of the bomb. This was the first time I had ever encountered Ashley Zukerman, who since his role here has worked consistently in TV, first as a corrupt congressman in Designated Survivor, then constantly in limited series as diverse as A Teacher, The Lost Symbol and most recently City on Fire. Fans of Succession will no doubt remember him as Nate Sofrelli, one of the few characters in that series who had become rich on his two feet – and who Kendall Roy had no problem destroying. (We’re told by the creators that he got back up again. Good for him.) Zukerman came into the series with idealism; by the time the show ended he was completely corrupted.

Much of the story dealt with some of the conflict between the marriages of both Winter and Isaacs. Charlie’s wife was portrayed by Rachel Brosnahan in what was her first series role after she had broken to a level of stardom as Rachel, the prostitute whose life becomes tragically intermeshed with Doug Stamper in the first two seasons. In hindsight, Abby can be seen as a forerunner of Midge on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel but unlike Midge, Abby has even fewer options and has nowhere to go. Abby’s arc is by far the most tragic. At one point in the series, she begins a lesbian love affair with one of the other women on the base and when this is discovered, the other woman is imprisoned and her husband is repulsed. She makes constant efforts to leave Los Alamos but the military constantly refuse her. The Isaacs’ marriage becomes a shell by the second season, Abby suffers a miscarriage and one of the military uses her affairs to manipulate Charlie to his will. She manages to escape the base by the end of Season 2 (when the show was cancelled) but her fate is unknown.

Frank’s wife Liza is played by Olivia Williams. Liza is a British botanist who has already been on Los Alamos since the series began and has already become frustrated by her inability to exist there. She had a career before coming to the desert; now she has no idea what is going on and is infuriating by Frank’s continued hostility. Despite that she remains immensely supportive of him; when Frank is thrown in a military prison at the end of Season 1, she ends up going to Princeton to see a colleague of his to pull string to get him out. She is then equally infuriated when her stubborn husband demands to go back to the base in order to compel the truth to come forward.

Many actors who have been at the center of so much great television would appear on the series during its brief run: Daniel Stern, practically unrecognizable, played Glen, Frank’s mentor at the start of Season 1, who when Frank learns of his homosexuality ends up betraying him in order to get clearance for his project. Katja Herbers, who five years later finally managed to breakthrough for her incredible work on Evil, plays a female scientist struggling for equality and respect. (I am fairly certain that her character was entirely fictional; I don’t believe that the government or military’s in the 1940s would let any woman near any government project; much less the development of the Atomic bomb.)  Christopher Denham, who incidentally plays Klaus Fuchs in Oppenheimer,  was a regular as did Harry Lloyd, perhaps best known for his work to genre fans in the cult series Counterpart and Legion. And Michael Chernus, a Broadway actor who worked constantly in Peak TV (most recently as Ricken in Severance ) had perhaps the saddest role) as Fritz. At one point, he accidentally swallowed radiation chips and was given beer to try and urinate it. We know even without the series being cancelled he was likely doomed regardless (and indeed, what happens to him at the end of the series is tragic but saves him a far worse death). Other future stars would appear such as David Harbour, who was a regular in Season 1 and William Peterson who portrayed Col. Emmett Darrow, the god-loving martinet holding the military in Season 2. Petersen’s work in that season was infinitely superior to anything he ever did on CSI.

Were it merely for the level of the cast on Manhattan, the show would have earned a niche in TV history. But in its two season run, it very clearly managed to deal with all of the issues that were surrounding so much of World War II as well as the fears around the atomic bomb itself. Frank Winter spends all of Season 1 convinced of two things: that they are developing this bomb in a race against the Nazis, who as history revealed had the scientists but not enough material, and that when the bomb is developed, it will simply be tested on an empty island and that will convince the Japanese to surrender – and that the sheer awesomeness of the explosion will be enough to ensure world peace. Both of these ambitions die hard in Season 2, first when Winter learns there is no Nazi bomb and this knowledge does nothing to stop Isaacs – by now head of the project – to do anything to slow its work. He is essentially held as a military prisoner for the rest of the season – the series accelerates its pace dramatically in Season 2 – and then spends much of that time trying to convince the scientists on site to go along with it. He is thwarted on a legitimate front and in desperation tampers with the bomb before a vital test to try and convince Isaacs to go along with it. Isaacs has a role on the committee, but not long before a crucial meeting he learns of his wife’s betrayal and decides that the bomb should be used on a live target. In what would be the series finale, Frank does everything in his power to stop the actual test and is danger of being arrested by the military and possibly executed for treason.

Manhattan also deals with the very real fears of espionage. Throughout the first season of Manhattan, there is fear of a Soviet spy on the base who is leaking information to the Russians. When the spy is revealed at the end of Season 1, it is not who we think. Much of Season 2 deals with the arrival of another handler Nora (Mamie Gummer) Those of you familiar with her work on TV as flighty but humane characters on Emily Owens and The Good Wife (which is how I knew her at the time) will be stunned by the utter coldness and matter-of-factness in her work; in retrospect, her characters is clearly an ancestor of Elizabeth Jennings or may even grow up to be Margo Martindale’s character on The Americans. At one point, she makes a decision so cold that the mole is stunned and this tragedy has repercussions far darker than that.

By far the most telling story comes when Niels Bohr shows up on the base in Season 1 to try and serve as an inspiration. Isaacs and Winter keep trying to impress him with what they are doing and he keeps asking whether “Do you think it will be enough?” Finally at the end of the episode, he tells them that he has been in this position before – when chlorine gas was developed and then utilized horribly by Germans both in trench warfare – and though the world does not know it, in concentration camps. Bohr tells them point blank a quarter of a century ago that was supposed to stop war and that their project here is just the next natural step in the carnage that would become the 20^th century. He might as well have been drawing a line to the later horrors that have followed, not just from the arms race, but for biological and chemical weapons. The scientists in Manhattan still have the optimism to believe they are doing the right thing. Bohr knows better, and we would have done well to listen to him.

Manhattan ended up being cancelled after its second season, no doubt because the ratings were never high enough to meet the level of expenses. (Underground would end up getting canceled despite its popularity for the same reason two years later.) I will admit I was disappointed at the time, but honestly it’s unlikely it could have gone much further when it came to its end. The series comes to the first detonation of an atomic bomb on July 16^th 1945 and as the world does know the rest. There might have been some cliffhangers to resolve with some of the characters but I don’t know how much more even a shortened third season could have resolved things anyway. In retrospect the series finale – titled Jupiter – may have been the best ending the creators could have hoped for. The last shot of the episode is that of the first successful test. We really didn’t need an ending for Manhattan because we’re still living in the world it created.

Both seasons of Manhattan are available on Freevee, one of the streaming services of Amazon. And to be clear, it is for reasons like this that I am grateful for the streaming services that exist these days. I was very likely one of the few viewers of the show who watched it from beginning to end, who realized its clear greatness and mourned it when it was gone. I don’t know if in 2014 which cable packages even carried a fringe station like WGN, which indeed did stop making original series within a few years. But Manhattan is one of those shows that you could find on cable in the 2010s and consider yourself blessed. Perhaps, when filmgoers finish seeing Oppenheimer, they might search this series out as well. It will involve a longer investment, but if you’re willing to sit in a theater for three hours in July (and by the look of the early grosses, it looks like many people are) binge watching this over a weekend is just as worth your time, and I’m pretty sure as rewarding.