Adjust your radio frequencies –– Shawn Levy’s epic All the Light We Cannot See broadcasts a tale of courage, hope, and human connection to the world. 

The four-part limited series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr has been nominated for four Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Cinematography and Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. 

But before you watch or re-watch, Levy wants to make one thing clear: “My central message to fans of the book —  and I’m screaming this from the top of the mountain here — is, ‘I’m as big a fan as you,’ Levy says. “[My goal was] to do justice to this gorgeous novel that touched me deeply.”

The director’s obsession with Doerr’s novel goes back years. He first read it over the holiday season shortly after its publication in 2014 and was immediately sucked into its orbit. “What I remember most is devouring the book, [and] being so captivated by its cross-cutting structure and themes of innocence in the face of darkness, hope in the face of evil,” Levy tells Tudum. “I need to make this book. I need it. I need to make it. It’s my dream,” he recalls thinking. But when he inquired about the rights, Levy found that it was already being developed into a movie. Still, he never gave up. Years later, when the initial project fell apart, Levy was ready with a bold plan to bring Doerr’s sweeping world to life in a limited series. 

“There is too much story for two hours,” he says. “The sheer runtime that limited series affords allows us to do justice more thoroughly to the source material [so that] it is indeed the novel come to life rather than the novel cut down to fit a runtime or format.”

This was important for Doerr, who wanted the novel’s more quiet and even light-hearted moments to have their place alongside the central tension. “I loved that [Shawn] saw a potential adaptation as a limited series: something longer than a feature film, with more room to breathe, so that it would be possible to balance the big, dark dramatic sequences with smaller, brighter, domestic ones,” the author tells Tudum. “[His] ability to tell complex stories in a big-hearted way made him an ideal choice.”

‘All the Light We Cannot See’ Behind the Adaptation

The series’ sense of scope is apparent in the new teaser, which takes viewers from soaring arches of Paris’ Gare Saint-Lazare to the woods outside a Berlin military school and into the winding streets of Saint-Malo. “To watch finished, polished scenes is mind-blowing: To see an auteur’s vivid dream of something I built with sentences and paragraphs is an astonishing gift,” Doerr says about seeing his work on-screen for the first time. “The series is absolutely gorgeous to look at — from the opening, with all the leaflets falling from the sky, to the montage of Marie-Laure’s father building her a scale model of Saint-Malo, it repeatedly took my breath away.”

Director Shawn Levy and author Anthony Doerr.

Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix

Newcomers Aria Mia Loberti and Louis Hofmann are front and center as Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig, who are drawn together by an illegal radio broadcast during the darkest days of World War II.  

Levy discovered Loberti after a worldwide casting search for blind and low-vision actors. “Aria, every single day, was able to teach me about the experience of living without sight,” says Levy, who describes Loberti as both “a magnificent discovery” and a true creative partner. Adds series writer Steven Knight, “There’s an authenticity about physical action that could only have come from having people who live without sight.”

The director applied similar dedication in his search for the right actor to play Werner, auditioning hundreds of German performers before landing on Hofmann. “I was looking for someone who had the intelligence to be a believable genius on screen and the soulfulness to convey Werner’s depth, even in the midst of circumstances that are cruel and relentless,” he says.

Lovers of the book will also get to see more favorite characters come to life, including Mark Ruffalo as Marie-Laure’s father Daniel, Hugh Laurie as Uncle Etienne, Lars Eidinger as cruel Gestapo officer Von Rumpel, and Marion Bailey as Madame Manec. See some of them in the first-look images below and read more about the full cast here.

Nell Sutton as younger Marie-Laure and Mark Ruffalo as Daniel LeBlanc.

Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix

Louis Hofmann as Werner.

Katalin Vermes/Netflix

Aria Mia Loberti as older Marie-Laure.

Katalin Vermes/Netflix

Hugh Laurie as Uncle Etienne.

Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix

Like its source material, the series tracks the two protagonists’ seemingly parallel journeys as they make their way to the French coastal town of Saint-Malo, where their stories eventually intersect. Blind French girl Marie-Laure escapes German-occupied Paris with her father in an effort to safeguard a priceless diamond from a Nazi Gestapo officer, and the two find refuge in her reclusive uncle’s seaside home.

“The father-daughter storyline between Daniel and Marie is a big part of the book, but I knew it would be an even bigger part of my series because I am a father of four daughters and that relationship is at the center of my every day,” Levy says. 

Meanwhile, in Germany, young orphan Werner discovers that he has a rare gift for radio repairs. Enlisted by Hitler’s regime, he’s put to work tracking illegal broadcasts but finds none –– until one day, a girl’s voice crackles to life on a defunct frequency he used to tune into as a child. As the bombs fall on Saint-Malo, Werner and Marie-Laure’s invisible bond over the airwaves is put to the test. Can they survive with their faith in mankind intact?

“The book — just as its title promises — is about lightness and darkness and hope and evil and heartbreak and love,” Levy says. “It’s hardly a happy ending, but it does posit the possibility of survival, the persistence of innocence and hope, and the constant ability to rebuild.”

Stream All the Light We Cannot See now.