Still can’t get over Oppenheimer? Christopher Nolan’s newest masterpiece hasn’t just captivated audiences around the globe, but has also sparked renewed interest in the historical events surrounding the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. If you want to delve even deeper into the subject, you’re in luck — the critically-acclaimed period drama Manhattan Season 1 and 2 is now streaming exclusively on Lionsgate Play.
A fictionalized retelling of the events surrounding the Manhattan Project, Manhattan is a gripping drama set in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the height of World War II. The series follows the brilliant yet flawed scientists and their families in Los Alamos as they navigate a world saturated with intrigue and tension. Though the series isn’t intended to be historically accurate, history buffs will enjoy the attention to detail and comparing the fiction against the facts. For instance, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Daniel London) makes recurring appearances.
With a stellar cast that includes John Benjamin Hickey, Olivia Williams, Rachel Brosnahan, Ashley Zukerman, and David Harbour, Manhattan was met with positive reviews when it first aired in 2014. Its first season got a 90% “certified fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and its second had an even higher score of 92%. Manhattan also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards and Excellence in Title Design at the 2015 SXSW Festival.
Creator and Executive Producer Sam Shaw, on how at the heart of it, the show is about secrets and their impact on relationships and society: “At a fundamental level, this is a show about secrets. As a person and as a writer, I’m really interested in the things we choose not to tell each other. I think a lot of the time, the things we conceal are more revealing than the things we choose to share with the people we love, with our friends, with strangers… So fundamentally, that’s what the show is about, it’s a show about secrecy and secrets, what secrets do to a marriage, what they do to families, to friendships, what they do to a community, what they do to a country. Part of it, for me, I think we’re living in a moment where we as a country are grappling with the question of how many secrets we keep, how we keep them, what level of secrecy is acceptable in a democracy. Really, I think this story is a story of the beginning of that conversation. It’s the moment when as a country, we began to keep the biggest secret of all, which is that we had this weapon with the capability of wiping all human life off the face of the planet.”
You can now watch all episodes of Manhattan on Lionsgate Play.
