Enemy at the Door is one of the Greatest Television Programs of All Time

Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi officer who, despite apparently not having a particular hatred of the Jews, facilitated and managed the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps. He was a key figure in the execution of the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt observed him as he went to trial for his crimes in Jerusalem in 1962, where she observed that the man displayed neither guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him. He claimed he was only doing his duty. From this account comes the phrase “the banality of evil” in which an average people motivated by personal success rather than adherence to ideology or malice whose sense of unexceptional complacency may lead them to participate in atrocities as if they were any other job.

Enemy at the Door is a show about regular people enacting Hitler’s will during WWII and the lives of the people who suffer the consequences of them “doing their duty.” The evil of fascism and the consequences of Nazi ideology are depicted constantly throughout, but the people carrying out these evils consider themselves professionals in an organization before they consider themselves to be the manifestations of Hitler’s genocidal will. They are, in fact, manifestations of Hitler’s genocidal will however. The show casts the Nazi officers in a human way not to diminish what they are doing but to demonstrate what we humans are capable of when we uncritically act within the parameters of a system. Although each characters’ motivations are their own, they are uncritically operating the Nazi apparatus according to its rules or operating it anyway if they are critical resulting in the inevitable.

The show takes place on the Nazi-occupied British island of Guernsey which has been stripped of military assets so that it would be occupied rather than destroyed. The inhabitants of the island are constantly pushed between resisting or at least not helping their occupiers and ensuring their survival leading to many impossible decisions. Here as well we have a cast of characters each with their own, often clashing, motivations and desires. The give and take between the full cast of characters is intense and gripping.

Although Breaking Bad and The Sopranos are two of my other favorite shows, this show avoids a major issue which plagued them which is that some of the audience did not realize that Walter White and Tony Soprano are not people just doing what’s necessary since they themselves were taken in by the brilliant performances of justification and manipulation both actors masterfully portrayed. In staging the show theatrically rather than cinematically from the perspective of the main character we are able to see the full dynamic between the characters as equals rather than be biased from the eyes of a sociopath. Although the performances in this show are also masterful and the characters may legitimately believe they are justified in their behavior the framing of the scenes and lack of a main character allows the audience to observe as objectively as possible whether that is indeed the case. When something terrible happens as a consequence of the behavior of one or more characters the victims are themselves fully realized and not incidental as they can often be in the above shows. There is a real gut punch and feeling of loss when bad things happen to people in this show because the show makes sure you know who they are and that they are like you.

I’ve been watching it from the US through Roku, where it’s available for free with ads. This site can show you where you can watch it. 10/10, unbelievably good, gripping, and thought provoking.