Transatlantic
Netflix | ★★✩✩✩

Is it necessary for grim subject matter to be dealt with in a grim manner? Would Schindler’s List have benefited from a jaunty jazz soundtrack and a bright coloured palette?

Does the fact that I’m pondering these questions while watching Netflix’s new seven-part limited series Transatlantic, suggest I’m not particularly engaged with the show’s content? No, no, and strap in.

Based on Julie Orringer’s book The Flight Portfolio, a fictionalised account of real people and real events, perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this show is its failure to do full justice to the heroic actions of those who saved between 2,000 and 4,000 Jews and German dissidents in Marseilles in 1940 as they sought to escape the encroaching Nazi regime.

Transatlantic Unit ©AnikaMolnar Netflix 010

Gillian Jacobs in Transatlantic (Netflix)

I say “desperately” but you’d hardly know it, what with the aforementioned jaunty background music and the visual palette of Monet’s Bouquet of Sunflowers.

Never has the south of France looked more striking, and while beautiful scenery can successfully juxtapose with human suffering to the effect of heightening them both, ensconced here in a package where more attention has seemingly been given to the sumptuous costumes than the cliched script and hammy acting, any sense of urgency, jeopardy and drama is diminished to the point where people’s lives at stake feels like a game.

It’s ‘Allo ‘Allo! without the painting hidden in the sausage.

Perhaps after working together on dour hit Unorthodox, the showrunners Anna Winger and Daniel Hendler wanted to create something a bit lighter, but whatever the reason, the resultant mishmash of tone here is at best bewildering, at worst offensive.

A police raid on a hotel full of refugees descends into farce, and then — as if to remind them, us and the characters of the human tragedy unfolding — we have a touching minute of people pleading for visas, all too aware of their likely fate if unsuccessful.

The back story is an antisemitic unsympathetic US government which restricted visas when they were most needed. A few people risked everything solely because they couldn’t face doing nothing in the face of great injustice and evil.

Transatlantic Unit ©AnikaMolnar Netflix 031

Ralph Amoussou and Deleila Piasko (Netflix)

Journalist Varian Fry was the driving force behind the Emergency Rescue Committee, and the first American named Righteous Among the Nations, yet here he plays second fiddle to the group’s source of income, heiress Mary Jane Gold.

I was previously a big fan of Gillian Jacobs from her lead role in Love, but she chews through Miss Gold’s dialogue as if trying to channel Katharine Hepburn, every line delivered as though this was a screwball comedy.

Along with other arguably unnecessary plot distractions and some eyebrow-raising casting, it’s as though every option, every element, was selected to serve an agenda other than that of simply telling this important story in an honest, frank and even entertaining manner.

Even the presence of Jewish artists and intellectuals such as Marc Chagall and Walter Benjamin couldn’t get me past the third episode.

I’m sorry Emergency Rescue Committee, you deserved better.