David Farnor | On 19, Dec 2015

Amazon has renewed The Man in the High Castle for a second season.

The show, based on Philip K Dick’s novel, wowed us when it first arrived as one of the streaming service’s frequent pilots – and it had the same effect on everyone else, swiftly becoming the most-watched pilot by Amazon Studios’ yet. Expectations were high, then, for the 10-episode first season, but it delivered with ease.

The dystopian drama follows a group of characters in an alternate 1960s America, where the Axis Powers have won World War II, with Japan ruling the West Coast and the Nazis ruling the East Coast.

“What’s amazing about Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle isn’t that it asks such a troubling question, but that it gives us such a scarily convincing answer,” we wrote in one of our reviews of the show.

The show is written by The X-Files’ Frank Spotnitz and produced by Ridley Scott, with a cast that includes Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans and Rufus Sewell as creepy Nazi officer John Smith. Amazon’s typical, hands-off approach was welcomed by the creative team.

“The thing with Amazon,” Rufus Sewell told us in an interview, “they basically, and Frank Spotnitz talks very well about this, they just left us the fuck alone. They had notes, I’m sure, but they seemed to be keeping them to themselves!

“They wanted it to be different. They wanted it to be the kind of thing that no one else would dare touch.”

The tactic paid off, with the end result proving one of the most original and impressive TV shows of 2015. Amazon has responded in kind, commissioning a second run of the series less than a month after the full first season premieres.

“This is the only time I’ve ever been in a position where I’ve wanted something to be picked up for a second season,” added Sewell. “I can’t say I’ve ever felt that way before. Normally, I just like to hit and run. I like my freedom too much. But with this, the prospects of where it could go are kind of dizzying.”

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