![]() ![]() ![]() This is carefully juxtaposed with the exhaustion and sorrow felt by Miep, Jan and their fellow resisters, who are trying to maintain their courage in a world festering with hate. The lack of space, light, and freedom wears on the mental health and well-being of the hidden and oppressed. ![]() “Motherland,” the series’ third episode, is a standout. The series also showcases the couple’s resolve to aid their landlady’s grandchildren, college students, babies, nurses and workers at Amsterdam’s Jewish council. Yet, Miep and Jan’s willingness to protect the ostracized extends well beyond the Frank family and the additional four people hiding in the annex. The secrets and fear sometimes causes friction in their marriage and reverberates in their relationships with others. Phelan and Rater zoom in on the effects of their choices. While Miep acts to aid those in the annex, taking on shopping lists, having heart-wrenching talks with her stoic boss and even aiding additional Jewish refugees, Jan’s defiant acts also get increasingly dangerous. Her sharp blue gaze and determination to do what was right at a time when others looked the other way sets the series’ tone from the pilot through the finale.Īcross eight episodes, “A Small Light” portrays an increasingly hostile Amsterdam, while centering Miep and Jan’s mutual and respective acts of resistance. Powley’s performance is particularly arresting. Therefore, nine years later, as Miep nimbly moves through now-Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, it’s clear why she doesn’t hesitate when Otto asks for her help. Miep’s bond with the Frank family, Anne (Billie Boullet) in particular, becomes a central component of the show. An ultimatum from her increasingly exasperated parents lands Miep at the Opekta office run by Otto Frank, who had recently emigrated from Germany.īy framing the pilot around Miep’s past, the audience becomes acquainted with a woman - an immigrant in her own right -who has always shunned tradition, embraced the ostracized and marched to the beat of her own drum. Nine years before the Franks vanished from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, the audience is introduced to a 20something Miep, whose life and focus are a world away from Germany’s newly installed Nazi regime.Īt 24, Miep differs significantly from the 33-year-old woman who captivates in “A Small Light.” Still living with her adoptive parents and brothers, she spends her days frolicking with her best friend Tess (Eleanor Tomlinson), dancing, drinking and bantering with Jan (Joe Cole), the man who would eventually become her husband. With Margot safely sequestered, the series goes back in time to 1933. It’s the first of many risks she takes to combat the racist, authoritarian regime. Quick thinking and determined, Miep ushers the teen to safety via bicycle past the gun-toting and cruel German soldiers. ![]() Miep ( Bel Powley) is tasked with getting Otto’s (Liev Schreiber) eldest daughter Margot (Ashley Brooke) through a Nazi checkpoint and into the secret annex above the office building where Miep and Otto work. The narrative centers on one tenacious young woman, Miep Gies, Otto Frank’s secretary, who risked everything to save the Frank family, and countless others.īeautifully shot by Phelan, Susanna Fogel and Leslie Hope, with a slight sepia tone to ground the audience in the time period, the series opens on July 6, 1942, when the Frank family goes into hiding. The brainchild of former “Grey’s Anatomy” showrunners Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, the series is a tale of resistance, activism and humanity. Nat Geo’s new limited series “ A Small Light” isn’t Anne’s story, though the precocious teen’s legacy is embedded throughout. The story of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who hid in a cramped attic with her family during the Nazi occupation in Amsterdam, is widely known, and amid the atrocities of the Holocaust, Anne’s diary presents a story of resilience and unrealized dreams. ![]()
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