I have watched the old movie about the trial. It was just weird with bad overacting. I've watched docs on the trial. I have seen the trial mentioned in many places. I know the basics already. Like many men I just tend to like WW2, history, and the moral dilemmas trials present. Unfortunately I just don't feel like this trial has much to offer entertainment wise which essentially is what a movie or TV show needs to do. I love court TV shows. I just adore the fight of intellects and the slow detective work. Defense says one thing and seems to be winning. Then the prosecutor finds out something smart and uses that against the defense. I could watch good court shows all day long. Unfortunately both in the movie and here the court case is presented in a boring way. There is zero back and forth. They try to create drama in a single Hermann Göring questioning, but it's extremely forced and doesn't work. The court case as presented here is boring and dry. They don't present clear evidence. There is no good defense whatsoever. It's just some random scenes from the real trial. I would have loved for them to present some stats, data, personal stories. Something to make it work. Initially they start out with the prosecutor setting up the court in Nuremberg. Building everything they need. Finding judges. That part is very fascinating. The debates about how to set it all up are great! Then the trial starts and the TV show bogs down into just silly personal statements. Lots of German leaders have vague statements about guilt. The prosecutors have statements about how important it is to punish these leaders. No info, no data, no proof either way. Just vague personal notions that become very tiresome pretty much right away.
There are also plenty of prison scenes. They are actually way more interesting than the trial. But yet again it's not interesting. A Jewish psychologist just interviews the prisoners one by one trying to make them admit to their guilt in court and trying to understand why they could be so evil. He learns nothing much and we never see him actually convince anyone. Hermann Göring is the main character. But the actor overacts the role in every single scene. He screams at people and tells rather pointless stories not focused on clear historical anecdotes. Yet they present him as this amazing manipulator. Which makes zero sense. If they had let the German roles be played by Germans we could have understood the appeal. He could scream in German making us see the power of Hitler in him. As everything is in English he just seems childish and stupid. Like a politician who just lost an election. That's a great fault really. The TV show is basically only interesting because of the historical aspect as there is no story or point to it. And since it doesn't even stay true to the language it kinda fails in that aspect too.
Obviously I'm glad it's made. And it looks great. The court looks great, the prison looks real, the few street scenes are fairly fine though way too few. It's always important to bring up the murders of Jews in Europe. Essential topic. On the other hand it's stuff you can find in a documentary. A TV show can either expand on the story or make it more fun to present it to a wider audience. And this does neither. You get random talk about nothing much most of the time and it's not that entertaining once the trial starts which is fairly early on. At the end I was bored. Maybe they could cut it down to a 2 hour movie. I feel like that would actually work way better. But 3 hours and getting so little info in return? They could at least have filled the dialogues with small stories about WW2 or the state of Germany. Make it worth all 3 hours. Unfortunately the doc is way more interesting. So I don't see much point in the TV show unless someone edits it down to 2 hours.
There are also plenty of prison scenes. They are actually way more interesting than the trial. But yet again it's not interesting. A Jewish psychologist just interviews the prisoners one by one trying to make them admit to their guilt in court and trying to understand why they could be so evil. He learns nothing much and we never see him actually convince anyone. Hermann Göring is the main character. But the actor overacts the role in every single scene. He screams at people and tells rather pointless stories not focused on clear historical anecdotes. Yet they present him as this amazing manipulator. Which makes zero sense. If they had let the German roles be played by Germans we could have understood the appeal. He could scream in German making us see the power of Hitler in him. As everything is in English he just seems childish and stupid. Like a politician who just lost an election. That's a great fault really. The TV show is basically only interesting because of the historical aspect as there is no story or point to it. And since it doesn't even stay true to the language it kinda fails in that aspect too.
Obviously I'm glad it's made. And it looks great. The court looks great, the prison looks real, the few street scenes are fairly fine though way too few. It's always important to bring up the murders of Jews in Europe. Essential topic. On the other hand it's stuff you can find in a documentary. A TV show can either expand on the story or make it more fun to present it to a wider audience. And this does neither. You get random talk about nothing much most of the time and it's not that entertaining once the trial starts which is fairly early on. At the end I was bored. Maybe they could cut it down to a 2 hour movie. I feel like that would actually work way better. But 3 hours and getting so little info in return? They could at least have filled the dialogues with small stories about WW2 or the state of Germany. Make it worth all 3 hours. Unfortunately the doc is way more interesting. So I don't see much point in the TV show unless someone edits it down to 2 hours.