Deutschland 83 (spoilers)

Anyone seen this? It has rave reviews online so I was anticipating getting wowed with a great spycraft period show and… what an unbelievable piece of dreck.

Practically every scene you are constantly slapped in the face with dumb plot holes and just a ridiculous script. Every character feels like a rank two dimensional caricature. To be fair the main protagonist is not the worst in this regard. The side plots are random and never satisfactorily resolved.

The single stupidest moment must be when they are investigation a very serious infiltration of NATO like someone just stole some office supplies and the General casually mentions “Oh yeah, the mole voluntarily blew his own cover”. Must have slipped his mind before. The investigator answers something like “Oh no, no one will believe that. WHAT TO DO NOW?!?!”.

Unbelievably bad and yet practically all the reviews I’ve seen are 10/10.

I thought it was intentionally ridiculous at times, kind of campy. Despite the subtitles, it totally sucked me in and I thought it was a lot of fun. Maybe not a five star drama but I enjoyed it.

Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had adjusted my expectations. I agree some scenes are intentionally ridiculous, like the encrypted floppy disk report. That kind of works. But nothing is believable. Too many to mention but murdering a West German soldier in a train to be replaced by a random dude from East Germany, forcibly recruted. Taking a week’s sick leave from being a mole to go donate a kidney. The overall lack of operational security is just absurd.