This is a shame, there are so few reviews for such an excellent and in-depth mini-series like this! There are all these truly awful shows that get thousands of reviews....oh well.
Normally, I am not some sort of history buff. Let's make that clear from the get-go. But honestly, this series of 6 episodes about 6 modern-day dictators is really, really interesting! A lot of history shows are boring and dry. However, the way they wrote these episodes using illustrations along with real footage and clever narration, makes them anything but boring. Put it this way...I was not bored once. (and lately, I'm getting bored quite easily from all the bad TV shows circulating about).
If you ask me, teachers should show these episodes in high school history class.
There was a cleverness about the style in which the shows were written....sort of "tongue and cheek" with the whole "playbook idea." Like (taking a page from the playbook) if you want to be a dictator, you must Reign Through Terror, and then the show would go on to present examples of how a certain dictator did just that. There were also examples of propaganda and how the general population can be complicit in the rise of these dictators.
Of course, I knew about Hussein and Hitler and had heard of Stalin and the North Korean guys. But I didn't know so much about Mussolini and the African dictators, Gaddafi and Idi Amin, so that was educational. Disturbingly educational, yes, but still very interesting. It's frightening how these rulers can come to exist and how people will be brainwashed to just go along with them...or maybe they know they have no choice but to go along with them or they'll be killed!
Anyway, I would recommend this show...even to people who claim they aren't interested in history. Unfortunately, those people will probably not be coming here to read any reviews! My only complaint was that they didn't have more episodes. Like, what about that guy in Syria?
