Thermo nuclear soap operas

Manhattan is driven by one of the most unlikable protagonists in TV history, Dr Frank Winter (John Benjamin Hickey, left).

Ask random people what New Zealand's greatest achievements are and eventually, after some "back-to-back world cups", a touch of Everest and maybe a mumbled Lord Of The Rings, someone will say "that guy who split the atom." And quite right too.

I can't recommend enough that you watch Manhattan. It would have to be the series that surprised and engaged me more than anything, which is a big call in the golden age catalogue of 2015 that included Better Call Saul, Fargo, The Leftovers, Mr Robot, Wolf Hall, Bloodlines and the fantastic final series of Mad Men.

Ostensibly Manhattan is the story of the mission to build the world's first atomic bomb, the title a reference to the Manhattan Project. It's a drama centered around a bunch of brilliant but flawed scientists and their families in the dust bowl of Los Alamos in the early 1940s. It's one-part paranoid thriller, one-part sexy soap opera and occasionally a little bit Myth Busters.

Such is the "loose lips sink ships" paranoia surrounding the top-secret mission that few on the base are allowed to know what the boffins are doing, while the scientists themselves will only refer to bomb as "the gadget". The show is driven by one of the most unlikable protagonists in TV history, Dr Frank Winter (John Benjamin Hickey).

It's the sort of character (loosely based on physicist Seth Neddermeyer) and performance that makes some people groan, but is pure catnip to me.

The guy is an a-hole trying to make an A bomb, what's more he's having an affair with the one woman he can spill his guts to, because she doesn't speak English. He has issues. Yes, he's worried what this bomb might actually do, but he's more worried that someone else will beat him to it.

His wife, played by Olivia Williams, is just as captivating and complicated. She's a botanist who has observed the flowerbeds and sickly soldiers and figured out this nuclear lark might have some nasty side-effects up its sleeve. Like many of the best characters of late, she's also a little bit mentally ill.

But it's not just the Nazis working against Winter and his team. That would be too easy. There's another design team, run by upstart genius Charlie Isaacs (Ashley Zuckerman), not to mention the meddling FBI agent who smells commies everywhere.

It's written by Sam Shaw and directed by Thomas Schlamme, of West Wing fame, so it zings along at a clip, and is well furnished with great sex scenes and plenty of black humour. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," drones the deliciously dour Robert Oppenhiemer - the man who will be credited with creating the bomb - portrayed here as a melancholic mess of a man not afraid to spout Hindu scripture.

The only spanner in the works is how you get to watch it. At the minute it's only available on Neon, Sky's version of Netflix, but I reckon it's worth signing up to the 30-day free trial just to see it.

Meanwhile in Germany, the Nazis were trying to build their version of the A Bomb.

You can see that side of the story via the six-part series Kampen om tungtvannet or The Heavy Water War out of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (Madman DVD).

The rather epic production may lack some of the finesse of Manhattan but it's not hard to see why it broke all records in Norway for audience figures. Some 1.5 million viewers tuned in out of a population of five million, so not unlike the number of Kiwis who tuned in to the RWC final.

It begins as Werner Heisenberg (Christoph Bach) wins the Nobel Prize for the creation of quantum physics. Problem was, he was considered a "white Jew" by the anti-Semites in the German scientific community.

Himmler's newspapers criticised Heisenberg, hinting that he should "disappear". But get this, his mother knew Himmler's mother and they had a chat and -- in the mini-series at least -- Heisneberg is saved from deportation to a camp because of this meeting of the mums. He trots off to try to build a bomb.

As one Norwegian reviewer so aptly put it: "It will enrage some historians, and some concerned will complain, but most television viewers will be engulfed". Like Manhattan it takes its liberties, but its epic nature explains why the story is so big in Norway and why I binged it three episodes at a time.

Heisenberg (yes, that's where Breaking Bad's Walter White got his nom de plume) is only part of the story. The rest revolves around amateur Norwegian fighters who parachute in from England to blow up the factory. I won't ruin it, but what they did makes The Dambusters look like tiddlywinks.

Like watching the History Channel, if it were made by HBO.

Manhattan - streaming now on Neon

The Heavy Water War - Madman DVD