We finished this 8-episode mini-series over three evenings. It is good one, a damn good one.
This is the Anne Frank story but told from the perspective of Miep Gies, a Dutch woman who risked her life to shelter Anne Frank's family from the Nazis for more than two years during World War II.
This is a superhero story of someone ordinary who accomplished extraordinary things. But if Miep were still alive she would harangue me for using the word superhero because in her view anybody can and should do what she did.
The Anne Frank story has been seared into the world's consciousness - a story of heroic resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. Years ago I visited the Anne Frank museum and I remember thinking how could a family of eight stay cooped up in an annex for two years and why didn't more people do what Miep and her husband Jan did?
The first two episodes are very easy to watch and I loved the love story of Miep and Jan. The meet-cute is a disaster but the second time they meet is magical. It is so easy to get behind them and understand why they did it. I kept questioning myself what would I have done if I were in their shoes. Would I be brave enough?
The last three episodes are filled with suspense to breaking point. So many eleventh hour tick tock nail-biting situations that make Mission Impossible movies a joke because it happened to real people. I know exactly what happened to the Franks but I was still hoping they survive.
Sorry, my words are crap. But trust me that this deserves your undivided attention and it is surprisingly not difficult to watch even if the suffering is unthinkable. I don't know... If I have kids I would sit them down and watch this with them because there are so many brilliant teaching moments, but that's me.
The reason this is called A Small Light is because of a quote by Miep who always ended her speeches with this: "But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room."
