I like movies and TV series based on historical events. Recently I came across a German TV series "The Same Sky" - "Der Gleiche Himmel" in German, on Netflix. It is a cold war Germany drama set in East and West Berlin starting 1974. There are 6 episodes in Season One. It has to be one of the best cold war dramas.
It is very hard to produce period drama with accurate cityscape, especially with the German capital in which much of the skyline has vastly been modernized after 37 years. From casting, plot, acting, stories, suspense, props and sets, dialogues in German and English, sound tracks, music, indoors and outdoors scenes, down to every detail the series is as perfect as any. To me able to see accurate reproduction of this bygone events in time and places is very engaging. There are countless period accurate automobiles which are eye candies. The main character Stasi Romeo agent Tom Schilling drives a gorgeous orange NSU RO80 twin-rotor Wankel engine sedan. Naturally any East German cold war era production would not be complete without plenty of Trabant (or Trabi) on the roads.
the NSU RO80 driven by Lars Weber (Tom Schilling)
Lauren Faber is Lars Weber's first espionage target
no man's land between East and West Berlin
one of thousands of period accurate props
eye candy period automobile and moped
As I am learning German every movie and TV series helps me getting used to the spoken language. While it is challenging to try comprehend as much as I can and reading the English subtitle it is not easy, but I am thrilled whenever I am able to pick out a few words in a sentence.
Strangely on Netflix there are 6 episodes for Season 1, while in actually there should be 3 episodes in the original broadcast. I infer the season has been broken up into 6 shorter episodes making them more digestible for most viewers. While searching online I found the 3 episodes (no subtitle) on Vimeo. I have no idea how long they will stay there.
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Another very good German TV series also starring Tom Schilling is "Generation War" - "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter". It is about how the lives of five friends in Berlin were altered by the second world war.
Lives of Others is a great movie about the East German Stasi. Goodby Lenin is a comedy we liked. When we were in Dresden we watched "Hogan's Heros" dubbed in German! Totally insane.
ReplyDeleteRob. Thanks for chiming in. I too enjoyed Lives of Others. Very interesting you bring it up as I was going to mention it in the post but decided not as it is a movie. Too bad we have been getting very little exposure to many excellent German films and TV programs. I am very happy with Hollywood studios' concerted effort to starve Netflix. Because of it our access to movies, TV, and documentaries from all over the world vastly increases. I will never watch anything that has been dubbed. The only way to experience a great production is with the original languages. I love those with multilingual, as in the case of the two series in my post. A spy movie that worth mention is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy based on Sir John Le Carre. Of course one of the best German film is Das Boot.
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