The true story of the Emergency Rescue Committee is perfect TV drama fodder. American activist journalist Varian Fry ran an office in a Marseille hotel in 1940, working with a ragtag band of resistance operatives, US expats and the odd sympathetic diplomat to enact a grand plan: help Jewish or anti-Nazi writers, artists, philosophers and other blacklisted individuals to escape persecution in Europe and emigrate to a fulfilling new life.
In a coruscating riviera setting, disparate people with a shared purpose band together to achieve something truly noble, working in the flickering shadow of the Holocaust without the extreme violence of nazism coming close enough to force the narrative fully into the dark. It could be a great drama, and Transatlantic … nearly is one.
