A Small Light (promo pic)
The new miniseries about the Anne Frank family “A Small Light” premiered to rave reviews. It stars Liev Schreiber, as a Jewish businessman in Germany during the Holocaust who asked an employee to help save him and his family. 20-something secretary Miep Gies (Bel Powley). And she did not hesitate when her boss Otto Frank (Schreiber) asked for help.
The eight-episode limited series tells the remarkable story asked her to hide him and his family from the Nazis during World War II. For the next two years, Miep, her husband Jan (Joe Cole) and several other everyday heroes watched over the eight souls hiding in the secret annex. It was Miep who found Anne’s diary and preserved it so that she and Otto could later share it with the world. The series title comes from something Gies said late in her life: “I don’t like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others. Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”
Show producer Joan Rater told the New York Times, “These people, they had washing machines and toasters. They were living in a modern world and they couldn’t believe, in this modern world that they were living, that these things could happen.”
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As of now, the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes is giving A Small Light a 100% rating.
CNN says “A Small Light exhibits considerable restraint in creating that sense of tension mostly without explicit violence, but with the persistent threat of it if their charges are discovered. The series also conveys the thirst for shreds of normalcy and moments of lightness amid their confinement and constant fear of exposure, tempered by the pain of those separated from loved ones, especially children.”
Variety says, “There is a lot of anguish in watching A Small Light, mainly because the ending is already known. Yet [producers] Rater and Phelan, and writers William Harper, Ben Esler and Alyssa Margarite, Jacobson sprinkle in glittering moments of defiance, humor and perseverance that help temper the very real feelings of rage and terror laced throughout the series. It’s a balancing act that isn’t often handled as eloquently as it is here.”
The Hollywood Reporter Says, “Eight hours seems like a lot here, especially given how many of the supporting characters in the story barely register — Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl, Miep’s three Okepta colleagues and collaborators, only get names and personalities in the last couple of episodes — but the value of the duration is established in the early going. It isn’t some hollow attempt to over-idealize pre-War Amsterdam, but rather to convey the complicated shadings of everyday life before it all goes to hell.”
Two new episodes of the eight part A Small Light will air each week on National Geographic. They can also be seen on streaming services like Hulu and Disney.
