What I am watching Thursday

I am finally catching up with Deutschland 83 and it's terrific. I suspect that it might be less terrific if I were German; it's twenty-five years since Reunification, I imagine that a lot of the themes will have been explored in the interim. But for a foreign viewer it's a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable sort of coming of age story, focusing on a young DDR soldier who is sent to spy in the West, an assignment arranged by his secret service aunt with the side-benefit of moving his mother up the kidney transplant list. Also, both parts of Germany in 1983 seem to have had really nice weather. I've watched five episodes so far, and am sorry that the final two will have to wait until after the weekend as I'm going to visit my parents and they haven't seen it yet. The plot has occasional moments of "oh come on, he couldn't do that", but the characterisation is rock solid. Our hero Martin is a nice lad, doing his best in a situation that he is, for many reasons, ill-equipped for, and I enjoy the balance of comedy against the edge-of-my-seat moments, of which there are many.

( Spoilers up to episode 5 )

Here's the trailer:

"TRAILER: Deutschland 83 | Coming Soon | Channel 4" (Watch on YouTube)