The first episode left me wondering if I’d continue but it starts getting good towards the end of the second. I’m up to about episode 4 now. It’s in German so if you don’t like subtitles, it’s not for you.
German language trailer on YTube
There’s a trailer with dubbed English but it seems comical once you’ve heard the original actors voices. I hope there’s not a dubbed version of the whole show, it kind of ruins it.
Now I need to find the German version. I started watching it last night, and the dubbing really put me off. It’s not Infra-Man bad, but the voices don’t match the actors very well.
Another classic example in my experience was the Swedish vampire movie “Let The Right One In.” I read about it online, bought the DVD and watched the Swedish with subtitles version first. Loved it. Next time I tried the English dubbed version and it sucked. Didn’t make it 5 minutes before switching to the Swedish version. There was also an American remake later but I never saw it.
BTW, the subtitles for BB are very well done.
Watched it - fun episode to episode although so many plot twists to follow in subtitles. It looks great. I wish there weren’t so many coincidences across the characters.
At least on Netflix, you can choose any combo of audio track and CC.
After listening to a couple of minutes of the (bad) English dub, I went with German audio and English CC…
One note about this, though. At the time I watched it on Netflix, there was a serious error during the final episode in the English CC (and, after I went back and checked, in the English dub as well) regarding a date given for a flashback, of sorts, maybe (it is complicated). The German CC was a different date that would have worked.
Normally, no one would notice something so trivial as a fictional or botched date, but, in this case (1) it was in a part of the final episode that is open to several different interpretations, which made me wonder if it was intentional and a clue as to what was really going on, and, (2) it was bloody obvious in a “I actually stopped the episode and replayed it because I assumed I must have misread it” way. I mean, it ran on Sky Atlantic in the UK and Ireland back in November and I would have thought the issue would have been pointed out and fixed before the USA release.
Hopefully they have fixed it by now. If I get bored enough later today, I will check and see.
And no, I can’t be any more clear without massive spoilers…
Good show. It’s better with subtitles than with dubbing, but I got the sense that the subtitling was done by someone who knew more german than english, as it had a number of oddities. For example, ‘following a trace’ instead of ‘following a lead’.
I just started the show and am still in the first half of season 2. I like seeing the Weimar era portrayed so thoroughly. I wonder how realistically the stage shows and club scene are portrayed.
I find the show is made even more interesting when you know the overall history. Worldwide economic collapse is coming in a few months and (consequently) the Nazis soon after. Little Moritz is going to be prime material for SS recruitment.
Even more disturbing is that Gereon is just the right age and occupation to end up taking part in the holocaust. He’ll be in his early 40s and possibly assigned to an Ordnungspolizei unit. These were rear-echelon garrison troops that often supplied the manpower for genocidal activities.
I just noticed recently that there was a season 2 and 3 available on Netflix and I am planning to watch but I may need to watch the first season again. I’ve forgotten a lot of it in 2 years.
I’ve just finished season 3. It’s a frustrating show, in that some threads are amazing and others are ridiculous. But overall I love it. Certainly worth watching if you’re at all interested in the time period or genre. Would love to say more but can’t really do so without massive spoilers.
I’ve just gotten to the episode where the actors playing Mortiz and Charlotte’s little sister are suddenly way taller than previously. Normally not something I’d notice except that the timeline of the show has only been a few weeks, if that.
Double Post.
Actually it’s been a few months from the April 1929 start of Season 1 to the September 1929 finish of Season 3. But even though teens can have growth spurts of 3-4 inches of height per year, that’s still a pretty fast timeframe for the observed height increases.
Realistically speaking, of course, that’s just what happens when you film teenage actors over a three-year period.
Just started watching it, and had never noticed in on my Netflix queue before.
I was prompted to start it up because I had just finished reading Berlin: The Wicked City, a Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for for 1920s Berlin.
Sorry for the reanimation of this older thread. But, Babylon Berlin is new to me, having been recommended to it by two married friends who usually don’t watch media (neither movies nor TV, so this is a big deal!) however, they are history buffs. Thus, I just started watching it on Netflix within this last week.
Having watched just the first episode and a few minutes of the next one, I find everything about Babylon Berlin to be fascinating. Seeing this era come to life is really something. It also is the most stylish thing I’ve seen in a movie or on TV in a very long time–maybe because I’m a big fan of art deco.
I am watching the dubbed version. Not having watched the original / captioned version, I find it to be OK, although a little bit distracting at times. Having seen the strong opinions upstream in this thread, I’ll give the original German version a go.