Network: WGN America
Episodes: 23 (hour)
Seasons: Two
TV show dates: July 27, 2014 — December 15, 2015
Series status: Cancelled
Performers include: John Benjamin Hickey, Olivia Williams, Alexia Fast, Ashley Zukerman, Rachel Brosnahan, Daniel Stern, Katja Herbers, Christopher Denham, Harry Lloyd, Michael Chernus, Eddie Shin, Daniel London, and Mark Moses.
TV show description:
A period drama, this show is set in 1943 in the secret town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Hidden away by the federal government, scientists live there with their families while they work to build the world’s first atomic bomb.
Frank Winter (John Benjamin Hickey) is the lead scientist on the Manhattan Project and is brilliant, kinetic, and self-destructive. He’s a man who believes that scientific work is what matters most.
If it weren’t for his wife, botanist Liza Winter (Olivia Williams), he would have become a recluse years ago. Now that military secrecy has severed the lifeline of communication with Liza, Frank is a man who is very much alone.
Cut off from her husband, Liza is snubbed by the housewives (who think of her as a scientist) and shunned by the scientists (who think of her as a wife). Callie (Alexia Fast) is their rebellious teenage daughter who’s become frustrated with small town life.
The newest member of the team is Charlie Isaacs (Ashley Zukerman), a young man who’s know for both his love of numbers and his conscience. He distinguished himself as one of the rarest talents that the physics department at Harvard had ever seen. While in college, he also fell in love and married a Jewish girl named Abby (Rachel Brosnahan). She’s now a housewife and the pair share few interests other than their young son and Abby finds it difficult to fit in with her new community.
Frank Winter’s former mentor is Glen Babbit (Daniel Stern) and it seems like he’s always helped keep Frank out of trouble. It was Babbit who asked Frank to join a secret military project in the New Mexico desert.
Other scientists include Helen Prins (Katja Herbers), Jim Meeks (Christopher Denham), Paul Crosley (Harry Lloyd), Louis “Fritz” Fedowitz (Michael Chernus), and Sid Liao (Eddie Shin).
Episode #23 — Jupiter
A new era is ushered in with the first test of an atomic weapon.
First aired: December 15, 2015
What do you think? Do you like the Manhattan TV show? Do you think it should have been cancelled or renewed for a third season?
really good show
More please!
I suspect all the sub and sub/sub plots are because they hoped, but did not realize the show would be renewed. If it was a single season show I’m sure they would accelerate the plots up to dropping the actual bombs. Now that it’s been extended for another season, they have to flesh out the characters and their complicated lives. It makes sense.
Absolutely renew it! But throw in as many facts as possible.
This is a great series! Gives a type of glimpse into what life must have been like for all walks of life that were thrown into the experiment called “The Hill”. Not only do we get to see the strong competition, animosity and in some cases friendship between the scientists but the civilians forced into this ‘bubble’ life as well. The writers have done a great job of mixing just enough historical facts with drama that gives us this great series called Manhattan! After watching just the first season, I felt compelled to look a little deeper into how life… Read more »
Renew it by all means. It is one of the best shows on tv!
It is a fascinating show. The fictional characters are so complex and so stressed by the intense security, the pressure to complete the project, and the need to not communicate the truth of their work to their families. Was the security as intense in Los Alamos as it is portrayed in the fictional drama? Was it as destructive to relationships as portrayed and were innocent people destroyed as Sid Liao? I am certain the bigotry and sexism were part of the real project. Please renew it for many seasons.
I liked it in the beginning but, the last few episodes are more about their sex lives than it is about the project. I hope that changes or I will lose interest.
It’s a shame peoples’ sensibilities are offended by the lesbian scenes. It was necessary to build it up to establish the relationship that Abby ultimately had to betray not only to save her husband, but the project as well. It was brave of her to do that and took a lot of strength. This show has excellent script writing. Best line ever at the end of the last episode – “Abby, let me in.” Charles was begging Abby to let him back into her life after he realized how much she had drifted from him during their stay at Los… Read more »
I think there’s too much sex. Come on, enlisted females turning tricks and brilliant female scientists doing enlisted men in cars? In 1943? I’m old enough to remember the morality of that period. Still, good people forgive a lot of sins, and I have fallen for all of the characters, in one way or another. Will continue watching. Please don’t cancel . . .
Hey Warren, in the general public there probably was a lot of morality practiced. Part of the beauty of this show is how they portray the physicists. They (physicists), for the most part, are some of the horniest critters on the planet, contrary to what most people would think. It’s kind of funny. Do some research and you’ll see what I mean. Thought it was great too how they all chain-smoked, drank lots of liquor, and even did psilocybin mushrooms. That part may have been fictionalized, but I’d believe it. Physicists are not just a bunch of geeks with pocket… Read more »
That’s actually what the show is about. Life behind the facade of a ‘perfect housewife’ or that woman scientist. There was far more promiscuity during the 1940’s than is admitted and that’s what this show is about. What we show to the public may not always be what’s in our hearts. The 1940’s was the beginning of an ‘awakening’. This is the era of the Kinsey Reports/Scales and the books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). You might remember that ‘enlisted’ women of the time were given no more respect than… Read more »
Some of the sex in this otherwise great show is gratuitous. A female military member who charges money for sex, becomes the girlfriend of a scientist, and a regular character, hanging out with the others? Laughable! A beautiful and brilliant female scientist, at a time when she was the only one, going from one guy to another, some of whom are clearly below her station? In those days such women guarded the their reputations because even a hint of scandal could mean the end of their careers. The male head of the a major part of the atomic program carrying… Read more »
My own mother, rest her soul, would repeatedly argue with me that racism wasn’t wide spread during the 1940’s and 1950’s. She would argue until blue in the face that Blacks were never segregated or ostracized. Blacks and Whites lived freely together, had dinner at each other’s homes, went to the same schools and what have you. My mother denied “White’s only” hospitals, drinking fountains, stores and other public buildings. If she were watching this show, she would argue the Black scientist would have no problems working on The Hill or in the nuclear power plant. I also heard the… Read more »
I agree with several who said the show was good in the beginning. I have stopped watching it after giving it three more chances to stick to the story and to stop pushing the lesbian scenes over and over again in the previews, in my face. Such a shame, could have been an interesting show. I’m sure many more will stop watching since your writers are trying to push their agenda on others.
Nope..still watching Best show ever. And as for the “lesbian” aspect.. it is honest. And if you stopped watching, why are you writing here?
I’m sorry you feel a woman who doesn’t know who she is as a person experimenting as ‘pushing an agenda in your face’. It’s clear you don’t understand this IS the story. Life as it was living on The Hill with the secrets and destruction of lives that happened. The few ‘lesbian scenes’, (i.e. a couple of kisses), were so sparse that I hardly noticed them. I was far more engrossed to the actual story line of a woman who grew up trying to be what everyone else wanted her to be that she lost herself in the process. It’s… Read more »
Absolutely right up there with Homeland. It’s one of the best series on television in a while. John B. Hickey ‘s acting is very realistic. Please do not cancel this series. Even if the factual afficiendios have problems, this drama has excellent appeal.
This such a great show. Much better than most of the prime time shows on the major networks. Regardless of accuracy.
Having grown up in Oak Ridge, TN, one of the three bomb construction sites, I’m intimately aware of the history and problems that arose while building the bomb. Does the series portray Klaus Fuchs, the spy who passed a sketch of the bomb through the Rosenbergs, ultimately resulting in a Russian bomb that was a perfect copy of the first US plutonium bomb? Will it go past the war to portray the struggle between Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller over production of the thermonuclear bomb, called “the Super” during its earliest days? Will it portray the withdrawal of Oppenheimer’s security… Read more »
I really wanted to love this show, and it started off well, but now it has become a night time soap. So many historical inaccuracies and far fetched sidebars. Everyone should read this great book, if you want insight into real life on “The Hill”—109 East Palace by Jennet Conant. It’s the real deal.
I feel the same way. I have watched every episode, hoping for better. The inaccuracies really annoy me. It seems like the product of a young writer too lazy to do much historical research who has also imported 21st century sensibilities and language into the mid-20th century. It bothers me that he uses fictional characters instead of the real ones, who, frankly, were much more interesting. The only historical characters I’ve seen are Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg, and only the first two had any presence at all–and did not ring true to life. Oppenheimer seems like a… Read more »
Ok…but this isn’t a documentary…this is faction based on fact. I think it is such a great show…if the producer had used “real” people…you would not be happy as they are as not as real” as they should be etc etc.
And the book on Oppenheimer was better than any info on him and life on “The Hill.” But this is drama, not a book.